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HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE 

No. 47 

Editors: 

HERBERT FISHER, M.A., P.B.A. 
Prof. GILBERT. MURRAY, Litt.D., 

LL.D., F.B.A. 
Prof. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A, 
Prof. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A. 



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OF MODEEi^ KNOWLEDGE 

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HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY 

Already Published 

THE DAWN OF HISTORY ... By J. L. Myres 

ROME By W. Warde Fowler 

THE PAPACY AND MODERN 

TIMES By William Barry 

MEDIEVAL EUROPE By H. W. C. Davis 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION . By Hilaire Belloc, 
THE IRISH NATIONALITY . . By Mrs. J. R. Green 

CANADA • By A. G. Bradley 

THE COLONIAL PERIOD ... By Charles M, Andrews 

THE CIVIL WAR By Frederic L. Paxson 

RECONSTRUCTION AND UNION 

(1865-1912) By Paul L. Ha WORTH 

HISTORY OF OUR TIME (i885- 

191 1) By G. P. GoocH 

POLAR EXPLORATION (with 

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PEOPLES AND PROBLEMS OF 

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THE ANCIENT EAST By D. G. Hogarth 

FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN By William MacDonald 
LATIN AMERICA By W. R. Shepherd 



^ THE 



COLONIAL PERIOD 

BY 
CHARLES McLEAN ANDREWS 

PH.D., L.H.D. 

FARNAM PROFESSOR OF AMERICAN HISTORY IN 

YALE UNIVERSITY 

Author of **The Historical De-velopment of Modern Europe f""* 

** Colonial Se If- Go-v eminent " in The American 

Nation seriesj etc. 




NEW YORK 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

LONDON 
WILLIAMS AND N ORG ATE 



Copyright, igiz, 

BY 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



tCI.A320622 ,- 



PREFACE 

No attempt has been made in this volume 
to write a history of the individual colonies 
or to present in any form a narrative of the 
events of colonial history. Many familiar 
details have been omitted and all military 
undertakings in which the colonists were 
engaged have been passed over with very 
little comment. 

In dealing with colonial history in general, 
three factors stand out for conspicuous 
treatment: the mother country, the colonies, 
and the relations between them. It has 
been customary in the past, when writing 
of the colonial period of American history, 
to minimize the importance of the first and 
last factors, and to lay stress, at least until 
the period of the Revolution is reached, 
upon the colonies, their institutions, and 
life. I believe that the balance should be 
restored, and that if we are to understand 
the colonies, not only at the time of their 
revolt, but also throughout their history 



vi PREFACE 

from the beginning, we must study the 
pohcy and administration at home and 
follow continuously the efforts which were 
made, on the side of Great Britain to hold 
the colonies in a state of dependence and 
on the side of the colonies to obtain a more 
or less complete control of their own affairs. 
Upon this belief I have acted in planning 
the arrangement of this book. Two chapters 
are devoted to England, two to the colonies, 
and the remainder to the mutual relation- 
ship, as seen in the settlements, in the strug- 
gle for independence of royal prerogative 
and acts of parliament, and in the move- 
ment looking to eventual union among the 
colonies themselves. While this form of 
treatment eliminates some of the dramatic 
features of our early history, it is the only 
treatment that will enable us to understand 
the events of the period from 1765 to 1775, 
events which lie outside the scope of this 
work. 

My further purpose has been to deal with 
the colonies in large measure from the 
vantage ground of their origin. To write as 
one standing among them and viewing them 
at close range is to crowd the picture and to 
destroy the perspective. We must study 



PREFACE vii 

the colonies from some point outside of 
themselves, and to the scholar there is only 
one point of observation, that of the mother 
country from which they came and to whom 
they were legally subject. 

Furthermore, I have included within my 
survey not only the original thirteen colonies 
but those of Canada and the West Indies 
also. No distinction existed between them 
in colonial times and none should be made 
now by the writer on colonial history. To 
understand the events taking place in one 
group we must examine to a greater or less 
extent corresponding events in the others. 
Only by viewing the colonies as a whole and 
comparatively can a treatment be avoided 
which is merely provincial on one side or 
topical on the other. 

Charles M. Andrews. 

April, 1912. 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. ' PAGE 

I Colonial Settlement : First Period, 1607- 

1640 9 

II Second Period, 1655-1682 ....... 42 

III Political and Social Characteristics ... 62 

IV Economic Life and Influence 90 

V The Navigation Acts and British Control. 107 

VI Imperial Adshnistration in the Eighteenth 

Century 128 

VII Colonial Struggle for Self-Control . . . 155 

VIII Evasion of the Acts of Parliament . . . 186 

IX Attempts at Colonial Union 205 

X Events Leading to the Stamp-Act Congress 229 

Bibliography 253 

Index 255 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD 



CHAPTER I 

COLONIAL settlement: first period, 
1607-1640 

The United States of America did not 
spring full grown into existence nor is its 
history lost in the mystery of twilight and 
darkness, as is that of so many of the coun- 
tries of Europe. It began its career in the 
full light of day, a career that represented 
at first merely the activities, on a new ocean 
and in a new world, of the great maritime 
states of the west, Spain, France, Holland, 
and England, no one of whose people ever 
saw the vision of a great and independent 
republic on the distant horizon. The United 
States began as a series of tiny plantations 
or settlements, many of them centres of 
trade or agriculture founded for purposes 
of profit. The small, obscure, and often 
insignificant groups of adventurers, almost 
beyond the knowledge of the people of 
Europe, were established in the mysterious 
west after many losses and failures, and 
were kept alive in the earlier years at great 

9 



10 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

expense of corporation and proprietor, few 
of whom ever received any adequate return 
in money from the enterprise they had 
undertaken. No capitahsts of modern times 
ever sank greater fortunes in more profitless 
expeditions than did the merchants and 
noblemen of England to whose efforts this 
great republic in large part owes its origin. 

To England alone, of all the civilized 
powers that bordered on the Atlantic in 
the seventeenth century, do we trace our 
descent as a nation. Neither Portugal, 
Spai^, France, nor Holland contributed 
directly to our settlement, playing the part 
rather of rivals or enemies and disputing 
w^ith England the right to use the territory 
of the New World, this largely unknown and 
untried world, for its own profit. The years 
of our settlement were a romantic period, 
a time of energy and heroism, of bold ven- 
tures at sea and exploration on the land, 
when island and continental colony in that 
wonderful region of Florida and the West 
Indies were planted in insecurity and like 
the frontier posts of western America were 
maintained amid the constant perils of 
existence. Along the coast of the Atlantic, 
from Hudson Bay on the north to the Ama- 
zon on the south, royalist and parliamenta- 



FIRST PERIOD, 1607-1640 11 

rian, Anglican and Puritan, feudal lord and 
democratic radical, sea rover and buccaneer, 
sought to establish settlements that would 
directly enhance their own fortunes or 
furnish them with homes, and indirectly 
redound to the glory of God, the discom- 
fiture of the enemy, and the good of the 
realm, and serve as strategic centres in the 
conflict for supremacy with the other powers 
of Europe. In the south England disputed 
and fought with Frenchman and Spaniard 
and Dutchman, in the centre with Dutchman 
and Swede, and in the north, from Hudson 
Bay and Nova Scotia and the fishing banks 
of Newfoundland to the great lakes of the 
interior, with France, her greatest and most 
tenacious rival. Should France, whose 
strength lay in her military forts and trading 
centres, win control of the great rivers, the 
Hudson, the Ohio, and the Mississippi, she 
would be able to cut off the English expan- 
sion westward and so check and eventu- 
ally destroy altogether the British advance 
in America. 

Thus at the beginning the American 
colonies formed but a part, and compara- 
tively speaking but a small part, of that 
great western frontier of the European 
nations, made up of water, islands, and con- 



12 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

tinent, that stretched from Hudson Bay to 
the northern coast of South America. No 
romance of later days in our great West can 
surpass the tales of adventure and suffering 
that accompanied the voyages for discovery 
and plunder and the enterprises for commer- 
cial profit that were promoted during the 
early years of the seventeenth century. It 
was not the activities of the Elizabethan 
seamen that founded our plantations and 
colonies, but the commercial ambitions of 
the noblemen, merchants, and capitalists 
during the reigns of the Stuarts. They saw 
in the New World great opportunities for 
wealth, such as earlier companies had seen 
in the Mediterranean and the Baltic. With 
very few exceptions the British colonies in 
America were founded for commercial pur- 
poses, and even those, the original motive 
for which was religious or philanthropic, 
had in most cases a commercial aspect. The 
years from 1607 to 1640 were a time of superb 
endurance, not only of those who sought new 
homes for the sake of religion, but also of 
the less heavenly minded adventurers who 
aimed at booty and profit. We can but 
admire the activities of those days and the 
lust of commercial enthusiasm and religious 
zeal that provoked men to journey thou- 



FIRST PERIOD, 1607-1640 13 

sands of miles, over stormy seas, in small 
and badly equipped vessels, into a largely 
unknown world, to seek, not so much mines 
of gold and silver, though that allurement 
was rarely wanting, but the almost equally 
elusive hope of wealth from tropical trade. 

The English settlements in America were in 
number more than thirty, if we count every 
form of foothold which Englishmen obtained 
in the western world. They stretched from 
Hudson Bay to British Guiana, including 
within these extreme limits such portions of 
Canada, the United States, and the West Indies 
as were claimed or occupied by English settlers. 

In the far north lay the forts of the Hud- 
son's Bay Company, where agents, factors, 
and hunters shot and trapped fur-bearing 
animals and sent hundreds of thousands of 
skins to England every year. In that deso- 
late region there was constant quarrelling 
with the French who lived along the St. 
Lawrence and claimed important parts of 
the territory. Seizures of British forts, 
particularly at the close of the seventeenth 
century, led to serious complications with 
England and to bitter debates which were 
not ended even with the signing of the 
treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the company 
continuing to present its demands for com- 



14 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

pensation on into the second half of the 
eighteenth century. South and east of the 
Hudson Bay territory was Labrador, a bar- 
ren tract of land with but few inhabitants, 
productive of a few beaver and other skins, 
and practically unknown to the colonists 
before the middle of the eighteenth century 
when an effort was made to incorporate a 
company to trade there. A few years later 
the Moravians began their self-sacrificing 
labors in the territory. 

Across from Labrador was the great 
island of Newfoundland, occupied and gov- 
erned by England, but never strictly speaking 
included among her colonies, the only real 
value of which lay in the fisheries off her 
coast. This debatable ground, a poor coun- 
try and never of much commercial value in 
itself, was a rich mine of wealth because of 
the fish that were caught there, and a very 
important field of action for the New Eng- 
landers who brought provisions and espe- 
cially rum, which the EngHsh authorities 
deemed "very pernicious to the fishery," 
and by promises of great wages enticed 
away fishermen from the banks to serve on 
their own vessels. Newfoundland, too, was 
a perpetual source of strife between Eng- 
land and France in colonial times and has 



FIRST PERIOD, 1607-1640 15 

remained a subject of dispute until very 
recent years. On the southern side of the 
Gulf of St. Lawrence were three regions, also 
objects of continual conflict with France, 
Cape Breton, St. John or Prince Edward 
Island, and Nova Scotia. There England 
retained a precarious footing and there the 
tide of control ebbed and flowed, until, in 
that great battle on the Heights of Abraham 
in 1759, England won the victory that led to 
the overthrow of France in America and to the 
founding of what has become today the pow- 
erful self-governing dominion of Canada. 

Passing further southward, through dense 
forests by way of rivers and chains of lakes, 
we reach that territory which is today the 
United States, but which was then but 
sparsely occupied along the sea coast and 
back by way of the rivers into the interior. 
The colonies of New England became even- 
tually four in number. New Hampshire, 
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connec- 
ticut, the original settlements of Plymouth,, 
Saybrook, and New Haven having been 
absorbed and the land of Maine forming a 
part of Massachusetts. Over the border of 
New England to the southwestward was 
New York, seized not very honorably from 
the Dutch in 16G4. With New England we 



16 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

meet with the first group of the thirteen 
colonies that declared their independence 
of the mother country in 1776 and with the 
aid of France won the victory in the years 
from 1776 to 1783. Below New York in 
geographical order were New Jersey, Penn- 
sylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and 
the two Carolinas, and still farther south was 
Georgia, the last of the thirteen colonies, 
first settled in 1732. Along the Gulf of 
Mexico were the two Floridas wliich England 
held for only twenty years, 1763-1783, but 
long enough to involve her in a very compli- 
cated inquiry regarding the land claims of 
the settlers. The Floridas were given back 
to Spain in 1783 and did not become a part 
of the United States until 1810 and 1819. 
Portions of the middle colonies, Pennsylva- 
nia, New Jersey, and Delaware were wrested 
from the Dutch, who had already despoiled 
the Swedes of their colony; some of the 
southern colonies were occupied in the face 
of stern Spanish opposition; and among 
the lowlands of the Carolinas, Georgia, and 
the Floridas conflicts with Spanish settlers 
aroused intense feelings of hatred, and led to 
many attacks and counter-attacks, at Port 
Royal, Savannah, and St. Augustine, in which 
the religious and race differences only made 



FIRST PERIOD, 1607-1640 17 

more bitter the struggle for leadership and 
control in the New World. 

But more strenuous even than the en- 
counters with French, Spanish, Dutch, and 
Swedes on the mainland were the exciting 
scenes of warfare that were enacted in the 
West Indies. The island colonies of England 
consisted of Bermuda, lying in the middle 
of the North Atlantic and originally a part 
of the territory of the Virginia Company of 
London, the Bahamas off the southern 
coast of North America bending away to 
the southeast, and the West Indies proper 
running in a curve from Jamaica to Bar- 
badoes. First and largest was Jamaica, 
captured from Spain in 1655 by the famous 
fleet which Cromwell sent out in 1654 to 
weaken the Spanish power in the southwest. 
Beyond were the Caribbee Islands, divided 
into the Leeward and Windward groups, 
some ten or more in all, and finally Barbadoes, 
one of the earliest to be settled and one of the 
most important that England possessed in 
that part of the world. Lastly, England placed 
her foot once more on the mainland and seiz- 
ing lands which the Dutch had controlled — 
Essequibo, Demerara, and Berbice — founded 
her colony of British Guiana, the only colony 
which she ever possessed in South America. 



18 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

Thus the long chain of British colonies 
and possessions, stretching south from the 
frozen waters of Hudson Bay, ended in that 
picturesque group of rocky islands in the 
tropical West Indies and in that solitary 
land of Guiana, in a world where French, 
Spanish, Danes, and Dutch all claimed their 
share, and where many of the islands passed 
back and forth between the powers as one or 
the other showed itself strong enough to 
seize them. In the years before 1660 the 
hostility of Englishman for Spaniard was as 
great as ever it had been in the days of 
Elizabeth and the Armada, but the struggle 
was fought on the Spanish Main and not 
off Cadiz or in the English Channel. In 
the later period France shared with Spain 
the position of great protagonist. The West 
Indies during our colonial era were the scene 
of some of the most varied and tempestuous 
struggles that we meet with anywhere in 
the New World. Here the navies fought 
many famous sea-battles; here islands were 
wrested at heavy cost of men and money, 
only to be rendered neutral or handed back 
with the signing of new treaties; here pi- 
rates and privateers found favorable oppor- 
tunities for their livelihood, until it could be 
said that it was more dangerous for a mer- 



FIRST PERIOD, 1607-1640 19 

chant ship to sail from one island to another 
than it was to sail to England, and that at 
certain periods at least one vessel in three 
was liable to be captured and plundered; 
and here during the War of Independence 
the privateersmen of the colonies performed 
their work with such signal success that 
insurance rates in England approached those 
of a foreign war, and British merchantmen 
were allowed to carry more arms and ammu- 
nition than the orders in council allowed. 

The colonies that have thus been mentioned 
in brief geographical outline were not founded 
at the same time or under the same circum- 
stances. They were founded at different 
times and under a great variety of circum- 
stances. In narrating these circumstances 
we shall follow, not only the history of Amer- 
ica during the seventeenth century, but the 
history of England also. The seventeenth 
century was the great era of colonization in 
the history of England, just as it was the 
great period of conflict between the royal 
prerogative represented by the Stuart kings 
and the demands of parliament as stated 
and urged by the more progressive and 
radical members of that body. The period 
of colonization begins with 1607 and closes 
with 1682. Between those dates all but one 



20 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

of the settlements were established from 
which grew the United States oi America. 
We may divide the period into two parts: 
first the years from 1607 to 1640; second 
the years from 1655 to 1670, with the single, 
and in a measure isolated, settlement of 
Pennsylvania, 1681-1682, which marked the 
culmination of the movement. These pe- 
riods represent the outworking of important 
commercial, religious, and political influences 
in England, and each of the settlements in 
America traces its origin to one or more of 
these great phases of English life and thought. 
At the beginning of the seventeenth cen- 
tury England had become for the first time 
an independent commercial kingdom, in 
which trade and commerce were rapidly 
emerging as the leading interests of Eng- 
land's people. Scores of companies had 
already been formed during the last years 
of the reign of Elizabeth and the early years 
of the reign of King James for the purpose 
of carrying on trade with foreign countries. 
According to the accepted policy of the time, 
a monopoly of trade in a given territory was 
granted to each of these companies, con- 
ceding to it the sole right to traflSc in the 
region named in its charter. Greatest of all 
was the East India Company, which laid 



FIRST PERIOD, 1607-1640 21 

the foundation for the dependency of India, 
a region governed until 1858 under certain 
restrictions by this private corporation. Of 
scarcely less importance were the Levant 
Company, trading to the eastern Mediter- 
ranean, the Muscovy Company trading to 
Russia, and others which added little by 
little to England's wealth and commercial 
importance. When, therefore, the atten- 
tion of Englishmen had been drawn to the 
New World and the title of England to a 
portion of it had been established by the 
discoveries of John Cabot and others, it was 
inevitable that companies should be formed 
to take up land and to trade in the west. 

Many of those who were already members 
of the older companies became interested in 
western traflSc, and in 1606 the first effort 
was made to obtain a charter for two "Vir- 
ginia" companies, one the southern in Lon- 
don, the other the northern in Plymouth, to 
hold land and trade in America. The charter 
was granted by James I, and in 1607 the 
London Company sent out its first expedi- 
tion and founded the first English settle- 
ment at Jamestown in Virginia. The 
second or Plymouth Company failed in its 
colonizing venture at Sagadahoc and con- 
fined itself to trading voyages, until in 1620 



22 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

it was remodelled as the New England Coun- 
cil or Corporation of New England. In 1609 
the island of Bermuda was discovered and was 
originally included within the second grant to 
the London Company, but later it separated 
and a subordinate company was formed to 
settle and govern it. Each of the companies 
remained in England, there held its meetings, 
and from there controlled its colony. 

At first the settlements both at Jamestown 
and in Bermuda were but plantations, pos- 
sessing no self-governing powers of their own. 
They were governed from England, and in 
the case of Virginia twelve years elapsed 
before that plantation was allowed to have 
a popular assembly elected by the people 
who lived there. During the earlier years 
Virginia was little more than a penal and 
military settlement made up of men who led 
an almost hopeless existence and were often 
rendered desperate by famine and disease. 
Saved from extinction by the leadership of 
John Smith, who taught the lesson that those 
who would not work should not eat, and by 
a providential arrival of supplies, the plan- 
tation weathered its first crisis, only to enter 
under the guidance of Dale a period of mili- 
tary rule, when men went to work almost 
with lockstep, and dug and harvested under 



FIRST PERIOD, 1607-1640 23 

military orders from overseers. Two events 
laid the permanent foundations for the 
colony: the granting of self-government in 
1619, and the discovery of tobacco as a staple 
article of commerce, which the company 
finally accepted, after many attempts to 
introduce a greater variety of industries, 
as the sole commodity that would return a 
profit. During the last years of its existence 
the London Company, though hopelessly 
^ divided into factions and badly mismanaged, 
Ki sought to become a tobacco company under 
contract with the crown to supply England 
with the entire output of the colony. But the 
control of the company lasted less than twenty 
years altogether, for in 1624, after a careful in- 
quiry by a royal commission, the charter was 
annulled because of maladministration by the 
Sandys party during the preceding four years. 
Virginia became a royal colony, and so re- 
mained throughout the colonial period. 

While the Virginia colony was becoming 
established as a successful commercial ven- 
ture through the corporate activities of the 
noblemen, merchants, and liveries of Eng- 
land, a new influence was making itself 
felt, in part religious and in part political. 
Already in Queen Elizabeth's time there had 
arisen radical religious tliinkers and teachers 



24 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

in England, inevitable out-croppings of the 
Reformation, who were opposed not only to 
the great Roman church of the west but 
also to the Anglican organization that had 
been established by Elizabeth. The more 
extreme of these Protestants were known as 
Separatists, because they wished to separate 
entirely from the Church of England. This 
body of noble-minded men and women, 
persecuted during the last years of Eliza- 
beth's reign, first fled to Holland, where 
they lived for many years, first in Amsterdam 
and then in Leyden, and finally came to 
America in 1620. Poor in pocket as they 
were rich in purpose, they sought aid to 
enable them to cross the ocean and support 
themselves in their new home, and obtained 
from a body of seventy adventurers in Eng- 
land, organized as an unincorporated joint- 
stock company, the means wherewith to 
carry out their plan. After a stormy voyage 
in the Mayflower they landed on the coast 
of New England, and there amid infinite 
hardships founded a colony, the colony of 
the Pilgrims at Plymouth. For seven years 
they labored to make their undertaking 
profitable, but as a commercial enterprise 
it proved a failure, and when the seven years 
mentioned in the agreement had expired 



FIRST PERIOD, 1607-1640 25 

the joint stock was dissolved and the Ply- 
mouth settlers assumed the obligations of 
the company and thenceforth conducted 
their affairs alone. From the first their 
government was fundamentally different from 
that of the plantation in Virginia. They 
governed themselves without regard to king 
or company, and thus their settlement be- 
came the freest of the colonies planted in 
America at this early date. Although they 
had a land patent from the New England 
Council, they had no charter of incorporation 
from the crown, and so their right to exist 
as a government rested on no legal title. 
For seventy years they continued as a colony, 
legally weak but morally strong, until they 
were absorbed in the neighboring common- 
wealth of Massachusetts, and the land which 
they occupied is today a part of that state. 
Though swallowed up by the larger commu- 
nity, the colony of the Pilgrims has exercised 
a widespread influence upon the political and 
religious life of the American people. 

While the Pilgrims were laying the foun- 
dation stones of their colony, a great struggle 
was beginning in England, and an era of 
political and religious conflict was ushered in 
which eventually culminated in the great 
Civil War. During this period of national 



26 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

unrest a famous migration took place to 
America, lasting for more than ten years, of 
many in England who wished to govern and 
to worship in their own way. They disliked 
the ecclesiastical and monarchical restraints 
in England and their eyes were turned to 
the New World as a refuge where they could 
live free from the traditions of the past. 
These Puritans, as they are generally called, 
organized themselves as a company and 
obtained a charter from the king, Charles I. 
At first remaining for a year in England, 
1629-1630, they sent over settlers, much as 
the Virginia Company had done, who es- 
tablished a plantation at Salem in New 
England. But this Puritan body, the Mas- 
sachusetts Bay Company, had no intention 
of following the example of the Virginia and 
Bermuda companies. In 1630 a majority 
of its officers with the charter sailed for Amer- 
ica and settled at Boston. 

By this momentous action the Puritans 
did more than found a colony, they founded 
an entirely new type of colony, since for the 
first time an incorporated company had 
planted itself on American soil. The cor- 
poration became a colony, and the colony 
rapidly developed into a commonwealth, 
sending out offshoots to the north, south, and 



FIRST PERIOD, 1607-1640 27 

west, that in turn became colonies, govern- 
ing themselves in much the same way as 
did Massachusetts, in two cases, Connecti- 
cut and Rhode Island, becoming before 
many years colonies regularly incorporated 
by the crown. The colony of Massachusetts 
rose to be the most powerful government in 
the north, growing rapidly in size, exhibiting 
intolerance toward all who differed with it 
in religious practice or political views, and 
claiming, by the most favorable interpre- 
tations of the letter of its charter, territory 
to the northward that would have included 
within its boundaries all the settlements at 
the mouth of the Piscataqua (New Hamp- 
shire). Feeling secure in the distance which 
separated their charter from the authorities 
at home and encouraged by the successes 
of the parliamentarians during the period 
before 1660, the men of Massachusetts 
assumed an attitude of independence, and 
were inclined to ignore all royal commands, 
particularly such as concerned the trade of 
the colony. So disregardful did they appear 
to be of the fact that they formed a colony 
and not a sovereign commonwealth, that in 
1684 they were disciplined by the home 
government, and lost some of the privileges 
of complete seK-controL By a new charter 



28 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

issued in 1691 Massachusetts, instead of 
electing its own governor, was required to 
accept a governor appointed by the king. 
■■ Of the two offshoots from Massachusetts 
that eventually received royal charters, 
Connecticut and Rhode Island, the latter 
was founded by Roger Williams, the great 
exponent of soul hberty and the first man 
to put into practice the principles of religious 
toleration. The other, Connecticut, was 
also a more liberal colony, and both owed 
their origin to a dislike of the narrow relig- 
ious and political policy of Massachusetts. 
At first neither of these colonies had titles 
to the soil which they occupied and were 
technically squatters on royal domain, but 
in 1662 and 1663, through clever diplomacy, 
they succeeded in obtaining from Charles 
II the desired recognition which made them 
legally secure. Forms of government in 
both colonies were democratic, and repre- 
sented more nearly the principles which 
underlie the government of the United States 
today than any other of the British colonies. 
Thus we have five colonies founded under 
incorporated companies, Bermuda, Virginia, 
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Is- 
land. In the first two instances the company 
remained in England, in the others the com- 



FIRST PERIOD, 1607-1640 29 

pany and the colony, being identical, were 
in America. Of the five, two only were 
destined to survive. The Virginia and Ber- 
muda companies lost their charters entirely 
and ceased to exist, and the plantations 
which they founded became royal colonies; 
Massachusetts suffered a serious modifi- 
cation of her charter which made her a royal 
colony, but less royal than the others, inas- 
much as the colony retained the right to 
elect its council and to choose many of its 
own officials; but Connecticut and Rhode 
Island preserved their charters intact 
through the whole colonial period, and were 
so well content with the governments under 
which they lived that they adhered to their 
fundamental law well on into the nine- 
teenth century, Connecticut to 1818 and 
Rhode Island to 1845. The democratic 
principles of government, which underlay 
the life of these two states, were so entirely 
in accord with the aims and aspirations of 
the people of that day, that neither Connec- 
ticut nor Rhode Island needed to alter its 
instrument of government until long after 
the other states, having thrown off their 
allegiance to Great Britain, set about draft- 
ing, in the years from 1776 to 1780, special 
constitutions of their own. 



so THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

Settlement by incorporated companies 
was but the earliest form of promoting the 
founding of colonies in America. Side by 
side with it went the activities of single 
proprietors who, like the feudal seigneurs 
of the Middle Ages, became, or aimed to 
become, the lords of great colonial territories 
to which they were to stand as to any fief or 
estate of land. During this early period 
many English and Scottish lords and baron- 
ets became actively interested in projects 
of colonization in the west. Chief among 
them were the Earl of Lennox, Lord Mal- 
travers. Earl of Arundel and Surrey and 
his son the third earl, the Earl of Carlisle, 
Sir William Alexander, first Earl of Stirling 
and his son. Sir James Hamilton and his 
son, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and Sir George 
Calvert. Though a few of the men of this 
class were royal favorites and courtiers and 
had no higher aim than to restore fortunes 
shattered by extravagance, others were men 
of worth and position, who were legitimately 
interested in colonization as a source of 
honor to the country and of profit to them- 
selves. Many were connected with the East 
India Company, the West India and Amazon 
companies, and were concerned in the fish- 
eries and the opening of Canada to English 



FIRST PERIOD, 1607-1640 31 

trade. All were leading and active members 
of the reorganized North Virginia Company, 
which became the . New England Council 
in 1620; and all, except Calvert, received 
grants of land in New England on the 
feudal tenure of holding of the crown by the 
sword. Though many of them were pre- 
vented by circumstances, financial or other- 
wise, from a successful prosecution of their 
aims, and so have been in large measure 
lost sight of as participators in the colonizing 
movement, yet even those who failed often 
labored zealously, sacrificing time and for- 
tune to promote settlement and trade, and 
they deserve a fuller recognition than has 
been accorded them by writers on British 
colonization in America. 

Lennox died in 1624 and was succeeded 
by his son, brother-in-law of the younger 
Maltravers. The younger Lennox accom- 
plished nothing on his own account, but how 
far he may have cooperated with Maltravers 
and the Calverts, with whom he was on inti- 
mate terms, there is no means of knowing. 
Hamilton also died early, leaving a claim to 
the Narragansett territory which gave the 
Connecticut colony some trouble when re- 
vived by his daughter and her husband after 
the Restoration. Hamilton's fellow Scot, 



32 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

Sir William Alexander, afterward the Earl 
of Stirling, the most distinguished and ver- 
satile of them all, with a title to haK of 
Maine, eastern Canada, and Long Island, 
from 1622 to 1630 sent many ship loads of 
colonists to New Scotland or Nova Scotia, 
commissioned his son as governor of a plan- 
tation at Port Royal, issued an "Encourage- 
ment to Colonists," and so firmly established 
his claim to Long Island that the first settlers 
there obtained from his agent the titles to 
their lands. He labored twenty years in the 
colonial cause, but left no permanent colony 
behind. His titles in Maine and Nova 
Scotia served in the eighteenth century to 
complicate claims to those territories that 
were already sufficiently confused. 

More important, though not in the end 
more successful as far as posterity was con- 
cerned, were the efforts of the elder Mal- 
travers. Earl of Arundel and Surrey, to 
found a feudal principality south of Vir- 
ginia. In that region, under a patent granted 
to Sir Robert Heath in 1629, a settlement of 
Huguenots had already been attempted in 
1630, after the fall of Rochelle, the last Prot- 
estant refuge in France. Directed by the 
Huguenot captain, Sance, and William Bos- 
well, secretary to the Earl of Carlisle, and 



FIRST PERIOD, 1607-1640 33 

carried out by Samuel Vassall, acting for 
Sir Robert Heath, voyages had been under- 
taken and colonists provided, but in the end 
the venture had proved a failure. Purchas- 
ing the Heath patent in 1632, Mai tra vers 
began to send settlers into the territory, and 
in 1633 commissioned one Captain Hawley 
to plant the southern part, c(Histituting him 
lieutenant governor of "Carolana" with ten 
thousand acres of land. Similarly he com- 
missioned another sea-captain, Hartwell, to 
plant the northern part. In 1638 his son 
received from Governor Harvey of Virginia, 
acting under instructions from the king, 
whose earl-marshal the younger Maltravers 
was, a deed to a tract of land to be known as 
Norfolk county from the ancestral, but at 
this time forfeited, title of Norfolk. At 
considerable expense Maltravers endeavored 
to settle his territory, planning to make it a 
base for further colonization southward and 
the establishment of plantations and trading 
centres. He continued his preparations and 
was gathering colonists, military and other, 
when the campaign against the Scots in 
1639, in which he was a general, drew him and 
his train of followers away from colonial 
schemes, leaving no trace behind, save the 
name of a county in Virginia. 



34 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

More fruitful of result were the efforts of 
the Earl of Carlisle, favorite and spend- 
thrift, who saw in the West Indies a profit- 
able domain from which to replenish an 
impoverished exchequer. In this world of 
contradictory grants and conflicting claims, 
where the French on one side and Sir Thomas 
Warner on the other had already estabhshed 
themselves at St. Christopher (1623), Sir 
William Courteen, one of the most prominent 
capitalists of his time, had endeavored to 
plant Barbadoes (1624), and Captain Hilton 
had found a footing on the island of Nevis 
(1628), the Earl of Carlisle succeeded after 
much trouble in making good his title, ob- 
tained in 1627, and became lord palatine of 
Barbadoes and adjoining islands. But among 
these scattered and largely unknown lands, 
in the face of frequent disputes and rival 
governors, proprietary control was difficult 
to maintain. Carlisle, financially embar- 
rassed, died in 1636, handing on his title to 
his son, who in 1647 leased the profits of the 
island to that ardent promoter of England's 
trade and colonization. Lord Willoughby of 
Parham, who became governor in 1650. 
Already had constitutional government been 
introduced into Barbadoes, and the island 
early began to prosper in the hands of a 



FIRST PERIOD, 1607-1640 35 

sturdy and growing population, more than 
6,000 in number, of strong royalist proclivi- 
ties. With Virginia, Maryland, and Bermuda 
Barbadoes fell under the suspicion of the com- 
monwealth in England, and after a spirited 
resistance was compelled to capitulate. 

But this feudal domain proved to be no 
palatinate, as was designed by Carlisle's 
charter of 1627; it had become already a 
self governing colony, controlled by moderate 
men, who centred their efforts on the increase 
of the trade and prosperity of the island. 
When in 1660 monarchy was restored in 
England, no colony in America stood higher 
in England's eyes than this far off island, 
"the granary of all the Charybbees Isles," 
and its influence upon the colonies of the 
continent was marked in many ways. Voy- 
ages to and from England were generally 
made by way of Barbadoes, and intercourse 
with the colony and emigration from it to 
the American continent were fairly common 
occurrences. As early life in the West 
Indies was essentially unstable, in a world 
where men ventured from island to island 
in search of wealth and plunder, so settlers 
from Barbadoes engaged in frequent wan- 
derings, which led to prolonged disputes and 
diplomatic negotiations with France and 



36 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

Denmark, that were not settled till nearly 
the end of the colonial period. England 
lost in a measure, but gained in greater 
measure, until the outcome of royal and 
proprietary effort was the winning of a 
major control by England of those tropical 
islands that her merchants valued so highly. 
Until after the middle of the eighteenth 
century Englishmen deemed their West 
Indian colonies the most valuable part of 
their western possessions. 

More noteworthy even than the disputes 
in the West Indies were the efforts made by 
Sir Ferdinando Gorges, one of the most 
picturesque characters in our early colonial 
history, to erect the lands stretching from 
Cape Cod northward into a feudal propri- 
etorship. The duel between Gorges and the 
Puritans was a battle royal, though fought 
by diplomacy and not by arms. Gorges, 
like the others, was an aristocrat, a loyal 
upholder of the Stuarts, and a believer in the 
royal prerogative. He aspired to create in 
New England a principality of which he 
should be the sole and absolute proprietor, 
with sub-fiefs and private plantations, all 
under a common governor general of New 
England . He obtained from the New England 
Council for himself and others the necessary 



FIRST PERIOD, 1607-1640 37 

grants of land, but found himself opposed 
by the Puritans, who had as their great 
political friend the powerful Earl of War- 
wick, also a member of the council. War- 
wick had been a member of the Virginia, 
Bermuda, and Amazon companies, and from 
his vantage point of the New England Coun- 
cil did all that he could to further Puritan 
settlement, particularly after 1626, when 
he joined the parliamentary leaders in oppo- 
sition to the king, and until June, 1632, when 
he ceased to attend the meetings of the coun- 
cil. Taking advantage of Gorges* absence 
during the war with France (1625-1629), 
Warwick aided the Massachusetts Bay Com- 
pany to obtain its charter, whereby a Puri- 
tan wedge was driven through the very heart 
of Gorges' province. He endeavored to 
strengthen the position of the Pilgrims at 
Plymouth and did secure for them titles to 
their land, but he failed in his effort to pro- / 
cure in their behalf the desired charter of j 
government from the crown. 

Warwick's efforts to establish the Puri- 
tans in New England were but part of a 
larger scheme of Puritan colonization, which 
was promoted by the Puritan leaders in 
England in the decade from 1630 to 1640. 
Fearful of the results of the personal rule of 



38 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

Charles I and desiring to secure an additional 
outpost of refuge should the parliamentary 
cause be lost in England, Warwick, with 
Lord Say and Sele, Lord Brooke, Oliver 
St. John, John Pym and others, organized 
a company in 1630 for the settlement of 
Providence Island off the coast of Nicaragua, 
which they maintained against Spanish 
opposition for eleven years. When in the 
years 1634 and 1635 the royal persecution 
reached its height and the Puritan leaders, 
under constant suspicion from the crown, saw 
no hope for themselves at home, they turned 
their attention to New England, and, dis- 
liking the narrowness of the Massachusetts 
system, established a fortified post against 
the Stuarts, "a refuge for those oppressed 
for righteousness sake," at Say brook, at the 
mouth of the Connecticut river. This post 
they retained until the victories of the Long 
Parliament relieved them of danger, when 
needing it no longer they sold the land and its 
patent in 1644 to the settlers of Connecticut. 
Thus the plans of the Puritans were as 
elaborate as those of the royalists, and their 
control of New England seemed assured. 
Gorges, claiming that the Massachusetts 
charter had been " surrreptitiously " obtained 
and seeing in Puritan success the failure of 



FIRST PERIOD, 1607-1640 39 

his schemes, fought the Massachusetts Bay 
Company in every way that he could, and 
his efforts left a trail of bitter remembrance 
in New England that lasted through the 
century. He was aided by Archbishop 
Laud, who wanted the Anglican Church 
established in New England, by the king 
and Privy Council, who by proclamations 
and orders attempted to prevent the growth 
of the Puritan colony, and by many allies, 
among whom was his friend Mason, also a 
member of the New England Council, who 
had titles to the territory. But Massachu- 
setts was too strongly intrenched. Charles I 
was too heavily involved in financial trou- 
bles at home, and Gorges himself had in- 
sufficient resources and was attended by 
ill luck in losing those that he had. By 1639 
all his efforts had failed, his great proprie- 
tary province had shrunk to a portion of the 
territory of Maine, and during the Civil 
Wars at home Massachusetts rooted her- 
self firmly as the dominant power in New 
England. It is a noteworthy fact that the 
civil struggle in England should have inter- 
fered so effectually to prevent the consum- 
mation of aristocratic and feudal schemes 
that might have succeeded had they fallen 
on happier and less troubled times. Had 



40 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

the Stuarts been as absolute, powerful, and 
rich as the Tudors, the great palace planned 
by Inigo Jones might have had a larger 
result than the present Banqueting Hall in 
Whitehall, and the Puritans might not have 
been able to identify themselves, their ideas, 
and their government so completely with 
New England. 

Of all the aristocratic endeavors of this 
eventful decade the most successful was the 
attempt of Sir George Calvert and his son 
Cecilius to found a palatinate in America. 
Sir George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, was 
secretary of state under James I and a co- 
operator in many commercial ventures, 
particularly in the east. He stands as a 
type of the earnest, courageous promoter 
of his day. Eager to advance colonization 
that he might benefit his Roman Catholic 
co-religionists and at the same time find 
profitable investment for his patrimony, he 
obtained a charter from the king for a por- 
tion of Newfoundland, where a Welsh pio- 
neer, William Vaughan, had already attempted 
a settlement called Cambriol on the south 
coast. Repelled by the coldness of the 
climate and the barrenness of the land there, 
he sought another charter for land within 
the territory north of Virginia, to which he 



FIRST PERIOD, 1607-1640 41 

gave the name Maryland. Dying before the 
charter passed the seals, he handed on his 
plans to his son, who unable to go himself 
in person sent his brothers, who in 1634 
made the first settlement at St. Mary's on 
Chesapeake Bay. No settlement up to this 
time so fully represented the spirit and hopes 
of a single man as did the colony of Mary- 
land represent those of Lord Baltimore. 
Though a Roman Catholic himself and desir- 
ing to find a home for the persecuted fol- 
lowers of his faith, he planned to throw open 
his colony to Protestants, and his son acting 
upon his wishes, with the success of the 
colony in mind and visions of commercial 
and proprietary profits to come, issued 
broad-minded instructions for a liberal treat- 
ment of all who desired to join in the venture. 
Though in the civil struggle that took place 
in the colony afterward we see one result of 
this mingling of Anglicans, Puritans, and 
Roman Catholics, nevertheless Maryland 
became in time one of the noteworthy seats 
of a vigorous colonial life in America. 

Thus by 1640 Virginia and Bermuda, Ply- 
mouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode 
Island, Barbadoes, and Maryland were well 
established, through the efforts either of in- 
corporated companies or of single proprietors. 



CHAPTER II 

SECOND PERIOD, 1655-1682 

With the year 1640 we reach the end of 
the first period of colonization. It has been 
a period characterized by a half uncon- 
scious struggle for the control of settlement by 
the conservative and radical forces in Eng- 
land, working by the same methods of 
royal grant and incorporation, and promoting 
their undertakings by means of chartered 
ships, filled with planters and servants, 
and plantations controlled from England 
and run as corporate enterprises on a sys- 
tem of profits. On one side were those who 
represented feudal practice and tradition, 
the prerogative, the church, and the influ- 
ence of landed property and privilege; 
on the other were the liberals and radicals 
in church and state with definite ideas 
regarding ecclesiastical organization and po- 
litical government, and who won the day 
partly because events in England were un- 
favorable to successful efforts on the part 
of the adherents of the king, and partly 
because those who sought for permanent 
homes proved better colonizers than those 

42 



SECOND PERIOD, 1655-1682 43 

whose chief aim was to promote plantations 
for personal pride and commercial advantage. 
The second period of colonization differs 
from the first in certain fundamental char- 
acteristics. Religious conflicts were pass- 
ing away; except for the Quakers the Res- 
toration laws against the Dissenters were 
very lightly enforced. Political questions, 
conspicuous though they were, had been 
in large part answered in the work of the 
Long Parliament and the experiments of 
the Cromwellian period. Other issues were 
crowding to the front. Trade, industry, 
and the commercial dominance of England 
were becoming the most absorbing ques- 
tions of the day, and men, notably the mer- 
chants and statesmen, were thinking anew 
about England's wealth, were watching with 
concern the rapid rise of Holland as a com- 
mercial power, and were studying as never 
before the opportunities which foreign and 
colonial trade offered. They looked to the 
West Indies, and saw in them new centres 
of industrial and commercial activity, and 
their imaginations were fired with enthu- 
siasm for America as a source of wealth. 
Returning colonists from Barbadoes, sea- 
captains familiar with trade routes and the 
products of the plantations, merchants with 



44 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

grievances against the Dutch and the Span- 
iards, urged on the government, whether of 
Cromwell or Charles II, to cooperate in 
the advancement and better organization 
of trade and foreign plantations. And to the 
royalists impoverished by exile, and to the 
king whose business it was to pay the ex- 
penses of running the kingdom from a treas- 
ury never too well filled, the importance of a 
favorable balance of trade, revenues from 
customs, and freedom from dependence upon 
other nations for staple products, appealed 
with tremendous force. 

In 1655 the Cromwellian fleet under 
Admiral Penn and General Venables seized 
Jamaica, and the island, organized first 
under military and then under civil rule as a 
royal colony, opened a new world of oppor- 
tunities to Englishmen, and hundreds, en- 
couraged by royal proclamations, flocked 
thither and took up land. During the next 
five years efforts were made to organize 
companies for the settlement of "Florida" 
and for trade in Spanish waters, but the dis- 
ordered and uncertain political situation 
at home dislocated business and led to their 
failure. After the return of Charles II, in 
16 GO, new attempts were made to system- 
atize more effectually trade and plantation 



SECOND PERIOD, 1655-1682 45 

control, and councils were appointed to take 
these matters under their immediate di- 
rection. Charles II and his advisers, look- 
ing on the Dutch as a menace to English 
commercial expansion and their possession 
of New Amsterdam as an injury to English 
trade with the colonies, seized the territory 
in 1664 and renaming it New York handed 
it over as a propriety to the Duke of York, 
brother of the king. The grant to the duke 
included also that portion of the territory 
of Maine which had been patented to the 
Earl of Stirling, and also the lands south of 
New York on the east side of the Delaware 
river, hitherto unoccupied save by Dutch 
in the north and Swedes and Dutch in the 
southern part. For the first time the Eng- 
lish controlled the coast line from Pemaquid 
to the Cape Fear river. 

Associated with the Duke of York was a 
group of men who had either accompanied 
the Stuarts during their exile or, serving 
under the Protectorate, had joined the 
king on his return to England. Royalists 
though they were and representative of the 
nobility of their day, they differed in many 
respects from those of the earlier period, 
particularly in a certain modernness of 
attitude toward colonization, bred of ex- 



46 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

perience and knowledge of previous failures 
and of a wider understanding of the kind of 
government that should be established if 
settlement v/ere to be successfully accom- 
plished. They realized that colonists must 
be attracted by liberal concessions and not 
treated as dependent serfs, and the experi- 
ence of Barbadoes, where existed freedom 
of conscience, assemblies voluntarily elected, 
and the right of law making, aided the new 
proprietors in determining their attitude 
toward those who planted their lands. In- 
deed it is probably true that the Barbadians 
themselves had an important part in shaping 
the first fundamental agreements made by 
the proprietaries with the settlers of the new 
territories. 

Immediately after receiving the grant 
from his brother, the king, the Duke of 
York handed over that portion of it which 
lay between the Hudson and the Delaware 
to two of his most faithful friends, « Sir 
George Carteret, who in 1650 had turned 
out his own family from his castle in the isle 
of Jersey to make room for the duke and his 
retainers, and Sir John Berkeley, who had 
lost by the king's grant the £3500 which he 
had spent in 1662 in purchasing the Earl 
of Stirling's rights in Long Island. Shortly 



SECOND PERIOD, 1655-1682 47 

before, Charles II, acting under the influence 
of men seriously interested in opening up 
the unoccupied portions of North America 
to trade, had granted the territory south 
of Virginia, which had been in part the scene 
of Maltravers' activity, to eight men, nobles 
and members of government, the Earl of 
Clarendon, Earl of Craven, Duke of Albe- 
marle (who as General Monck had aided in 
the king's restoration), Sir Anthony Ashley 
Cooper (Lord Ashley and afterward Earl of 
Shaftesbury), Sir George Carteret and Sir 
John Berkeley (patentees of New Jersey), 
Sir William Berkeley (governor of Virginia 
and recently in England), and Sir John 
Colleton (from Barbadoes, also at this time 
in England). These men were no mere 
court favorites, but were all interested in 
using their grants for the welfare of them- 
selves and of England, and many of them 
were active and efficient promoters of the 
commercial prosperity of the country. Thus 
arose a new form of proprietary control, 
in which a group of men combined together 
as joint proprietors owning the land and 
controlling the colony, not in the interest of 
religion or politics but of trade. 

But the new system of proprietary control, 
represented by the Jerseys, the Carolinas, 



48 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

and the Bahamas, did not prove a successful 
form of colonial enterprise. There were too 
many proprietors interested as land holders 
in the development of their proprieties. In 
this respect New Jersey had an extraordi- 
nary career. Held by Carteret and Berkeley 
in joint ownership for ten years, 1664-1674, 
it was finally divided into two parts, after 
Berkeley, wearying of his proprietary obli- 
gations, had sold out to a Quaker, Edward 
Byllynge, who in turn conveyed his rights 
to William Penn and two other distinguished 
members of the Society of Friends. The 
northern part, controlled by Carteret, was 
known as East New Jersey, the southern, 
controlled by the Quakers, as West New 
Jersey. Before the division joint proprie- 
tary control had centred chiefly in the north, 
where political confusion reigned during the 
early period, largely owing to the presence of 
New Englanders, who had settled the towns 
of Elizabeth and Newark and resented the 
attempt of the proprietary governor to as- 
sert his authority or to enforce the half 
feudal rights of the proprietors. Carteret 
died in 1679, and in 1680 his executors put 
up his rights at auction and sold them for 
£3400 to twelve Quakers, who associated 
with themselves twelve others. Efforts were 



SECOND PERIOD, 1655-1682 49 

made to build up the colony, but without 
much success, and in 1688 the twenty-four 
gave up their title to the government, but 
resumed it again after 1689. Still they could 
not agree, quarrels became frequent, partic- 
ularly regarding land titles, and finally in 
1702 the English government compelled 
them to surrender their rights of govern- 
ment permanently to the crown, leaving 
to them only the title to the soil. 

In West New Jersey there were fewer pro- 
prietaries and matters went more smoothly. 
Settlement was promoted by the Quakers 
and the town of Burlington was founded in 
1677. A very interesting and liberal form of 
government was provided and continued 
for ten years, when Byllynge died and trans- 
ferred his claim to a famous land promoter. 
Dr. Coxe in England. But he in 1691 
conveyed the government to the West ' 
Jersey Society, a body of forty-eight pro- 
prietors. Thus before 1702 East and West I 
Jersey were in reality in the hands of two 
land companies, who paid more attention to 
their landed rights than to the building up of 
strong government. Quaker control in West 
New Jersey came to an end with the advent 
of the West Jersey Society, and though set- 
tlers came in from New York, Long Island, 



50 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

and New England, the situation became in- 
creasingly unsatisfactory, and in 1702 the 
society, though retaining its title to the soil, 
surrendered the colony to the crown. The 
two colonies, united under royal rule, re- 
mained the royal colony of New Jersey to 
the end of the colonial period. 

New York, in the meantime, had entered 
on its career as a proprietary colony under the 
Duke of York, and for eighteen years, barring 
the brief period, 1673-1674, when the Dutch 
recaptured the colony, was governed as a 
conquered province by a series of able 
appointees, Nicolls, Lovelace, Andros, and 
Dongan, without popular cooperation of any 
kind. Though the government was not 
oppressive, colonial discontent was manifest, 
and finally in 1682, Dongan was instructed 
by the duke to call a popular assembly. 
This body drafted a "Charter of Liberties," 
but before the document could receive 
ducal ratification the situation in England 
had changed, James, the duke, had become 
James II, the king. What the duke seemed 
willing to concede, the king refused to grant, 
and the colony returned to its former condi- 
tion of autocratic control. Not until after 
the revolution of 1688 and the overthrow of 
James II was a regular form of popular 



SECOND PERIOD, 1655-1682 51 

government established and an assembly 
called, which met for the first time in 1691. 
From this time forward a representative body 
of the people convened regularly and proved 
a vigorous and determined agent in its 
efforts to increase the powers of the popular 
element. From 1685 to the end of the colo- 
nial period New York was a royal colony. 

More interesting than the settlement and 
history of the Jerseys and more significant 
in many particulars than that of New York, 
were the circumstances which led to the 
founding of the colonies of the Carolinas and 
the Bahamas, for both were representative of 
a common movement. Of all the proprie- 
taries of the Carolinas the most energetic 
was Anthony Ashley Cooper, afterward the 
Earl of Shaftesbury, one of the most impor- 
tant promoters of colonial settlement and 
policy. He worked in combination with many 
men familiar with colonial affairs, and, thor- 
oughly convinced of the importance of the 
colonies for trade, he spent four or five years 
in endeavoring to build up these settlements. 
His ally and secretary was the philosopher 
John Locke, who threw himself with great 
enthusiasm into the colonial scheme and was 
probably as much interested in trade as he 
wa^ in the human understanding. 



52 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

After the first efforts of the Carohna pro- 
prietors, during the years from 1G66 to 1669, 
had proved a failure, Ashley, himself one of 
the patentees, took the matter in hand and 
became a colonial promoter on a large scale. 
With others he formed a company which 
received a grant of the Bahamas in 1670, 
and he began to send over colonists, with the 
intention of organizing Carolina and the 
Bahamas as strong centres of trade and 
commerce. Charleston was founded not 
far from the spot where it now stands, and 
the settlement grew in numbers. New 
Providence in the Bahamas was also founded, 
and further settlement was planned to the 
southward of Charleston. Already was Albe- 
marle in the north fairly started on its way 
through the influx of settlers from Virginia, 
and Ashley hoped to make the four colonies 
centres of a system of cooperative activity 
and trade. Already had Locke drawn up a 
constitution for the new settlements, an 
extraordinary document, embodying elabor- 
ate rules based on feudal law touching the 
division and holding of land and providing 
for an hereditary nobility of landgraves and 
casiques, and already had Ashley, made 
Earl of Shaftesbury in 1672 and president of 
the joint board of trade and plantations ap- 



SECOND PERIOD, 1655-1682 53 

pointed in the same year, infused new life 
into the system of colonial control in England. 
For four years, 1670-1674, both these men 
labored to settle and stock their colonies, 
to provide for a suitable form of government, 
and to furnish an efficient system of colonial 
administration in England. But their plans 
were doomed to failure. The constitution / 
proved, as would be anticipated, an unwork- 
able scheme for an infant colony, and 
though it continued for twenty years to vex 
the settlers it was eventually abandoned, 
while the group of trading centres proved 
equally barren of results. In England, though 
Shaftesbury remained at the head of the 
council till 1674, he eventually fell from 
power, and all plans for colonial develop- 
ment were given up in the political confusion 
that followed. Despite so many apparent 
failures Shaftesbury must be considered one ^ 
of the greatest among our colonial founders, 
and one who in his management of colonial 
affairs in England placed the British colonial 
policy on a broader and more comprehen- 
sive foundation than had hitherto been laid. 
To him more than to anyone else do North 
and South Carolina and the Bahamas owe 
their being. 

These colonies continued under their re- 



54 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

spective bodies of proprietors for many years. 
In South Carolina a prolonged conflict took 
place between the colonists and the proprie- 
tors regarding the constitution and the landed 
claims which ended in part in a popular 
victory, only to be followed by further dis- 
putes concerning religious and military affairs. 
In fact, rule by proprietors was proving, 
here as elsewhere, hopelessly out of touch 
with the sentiments and needs of the colonies. 
The popular assembly steadily encroached 
on proprietary prerogative until under pres- 
sure from the crown on one side and the popu- 
lar assembly on the other the proprietaries 
surrendered their colony, though it was ten 
years before the charter was actually annulled. 
Similarly in North Carolina the crown, 
because of the great disorders and dis- 
tractions of proprietary rule with its irregu- 
lar and confused methods of government, 
demanded the surrender of the colony and 
it too was taken under the king's immediate 
protection and government in 1729. 

The Bahamas passed through even a storm- 
ier history, becoming little more than a 
rendezvous for pirates until 1718, when 
under Gov. Woodcs Rogers, himself half a 
buccaneer, a semblance of order was ob- 
tained. But settlement was very slow, and. 



SECOND PERIOD, 1655-1682 55 

with no adequate system of popular govern- 
ment and no sufficient means of defence, 
the colony remained the most backward of 
all the West Indies. Roused by reports of 
the bad state and condition of the islands 
the British government purchased the rights 
of the proprietors, and the Bahamas became 
a royal colony in 1734. Thus all the colonies 
settled under groups of proprietors — the 
Jerseys, Carolinas, and Bahamas — illus- 
trate in a striking manner the inefficiency 
of joint proprietary control. All became 
seats of anarchy and misrule so glaring as to 
demand in the interest of imperial trade and 
defence the interference of the crown. 

In the end but two proprietary govern- 
ments survived, those of Maryland and Penn- 
sylvania. The reasons for their survival are 
not far to seek. Each was a colony under a 
single proprietary, who took a deep personal 
interest in his province and at one time or 
another, in the person of the original grantee 
or his successors, was present in the territory. 
In the main the relations were friendly, and 
the respective proprietary families considered 
to a high degree the welfare of their people. 
Inevitably there were disagreements, seri- 
ous disagreements, between the popular and 
proprietary parties in the colonies, but pro- 



56 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

prietary rule never provoked anarchy or 
lawlessness. Though each proprietor lost 
his colony for a time, he was able to weather 
the storm, and all the efforts of the English 
authorities to bring these governments under 
the crown in the eighteenth century ended in 
failure. Maryland and Pennsylvania re- 
mained under their proprietary families 
until the outbreak of the Revolution. 

The founding of Pennsylvania was due to 
the activities of William Penn and the 
Quakers. Just as at the beginning of the 
century Pilgrims, Puritans, and Roman 
Catholics had sought America for religious 
or political reasons, so after 1660 and the 
passage of the laws against Dissenters — 
commonly known as the Clarendon Code — 
the Quakers found themselves persecuted 
and oppressed. Fantastic and extreme in 
many of their attitudes they roused opposi- 
tion in England, and when they came to 
America were hounded from colony to colony 
without sympathy and without peace. Only 
in Rhode Island did they find a congenial 
resting place, and there they became leaders 
of government and influential members of the 
community. In the Jerseys also they shared 
in the control and development of the colony. 
But during the years from 1672 to 1682 the 



SECOND PERIOD, 1655-1682 57 

Quakers wanted a home of their own, and 
thus it was that Wilham Penn, son of the 
Admiral Penn, who conducted Cromwell's 
expedition to the West Indies in 1654, peti- 
tioned the king for a grant of land in Amer- 
ica. Despite much opposition on the part 
of those officially interested in the manage- 
ment of the colonies, who thought that too 
many independent settlements had already 
been established in America, Penn obtained 
the grant that he asked for. He was a friend 
of the Stuarts and had a claim upon the 
royal bounty. The only available territory 
along the coast was that which lay between 
New York and the Jerseys on the north and 
Maryland on the south, and in this quarter 
Penn founded his colony. 

Wishing to try a new and holy experiment, 
he and his fellow colonists set sail from 
England in September, 1682, and six weeks 
later landed on the banks of the Delaware. 
His city, Philadelphia, the city of brotherly 
loye^ had already been laid out by fore- 
runners, who had preceded him, and soon 
rose to be a stately town of houses and cot- 
tages. The city and towns in the surrounding 
country were soon settled by a remarkably 
cosmopolitan population of English, Irish, 
and Welsh Quakers, German Mennonites, 



58 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

Danes, and Scots, while there already were 
in the colony on his arrival probably between 
600 and 1000 Swedes, Finns, and Dutch 
with prosperous plantations. The colony 
of Pennsylvania early expanded into a 
stately commercial commonwealth, at peace 
with the Indians and engaged in extensive 
commercial relations with other colonies on 
the American continent and in the West 
Indies. But it was rarely at peace within 
itself or with its neighbors. For many 
years it was the centre of differences of opin- 
ion and presistent disputes. Noble man that 
Penn was, he lacked a certain common and 
practical sense that might have smoothed 
over many difficulties. He was confronted 
by quarrels among his own settlers in Phil- 
adelphia, was opposed by the Anglican 
church and the royal officials in America, 
and had long and bitter controversies with 
Maryland on the south and New York on 
the north, over their respective boundaries, 
that were not settled for eighty years. As 
the sole proprietor of his province, Penn 
wished to make his venture financially 
profitable. He endeavored to extend his 
northern boundary to include the great 
fur-bearing regions of the northwest and the 
southern to embrace the Delaware river and 



SECOND PERIOD, 1655-1682 59 

bay that he might obtain a commercial 
outlet to the ocean. He lost the northern 
area in his controversy with New York, but 
he gained the outlet to the ocean and the 
control over the three lower counties, now 
the state of Delaware, in the controversy 
with Maryland. 

Thus with the founding of Pennsylvania 
all the colonies, save Georgia only, were 
firmly settled before the close of the seven- 
teenth century. Undertaken in all cases, 
save that of Jamaica, by private individuals, 
companies, joint proprietors, or single pro- 
prietors, all except four had become royal 
colonies before the first third of the eighteenth 
century had passed away. After 1700 many 
attempts were made to unite all the corporate 
and proprietary colonies to the crown, but 
without success. Though always striving to 
bring all the colonies to one uniform royal 
type and so to consolidate her imperial con- 
trol, England never succeeded in her effort. 

The colonists were not conservative, satis- 
fied, and prosperous Englishmen; they w^ere 
as a rule the discontented and restless adven- 
turers, the poor, the vagrant, and even 
those of the criminal class, or else they were 
those whose views of government and re- 
ligion did not accord with the practices 



60 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

which prevailed in England. Large num- 
bers of the colonists were law-abiding. God- 
fearing, and conscientious people, but they 
were already liberal and even radical in their 
political opinions before they left the home 
country. England of the seventeenth cen- 
tury was seething with unrest; it was not the 
England which a century later had become 
fixed and stereotyped in its modes of politi- 
cal life and thought. Those who migrated 
during the reigns of the Stuarts were not 
. likely to carry with them conservative views 
\ of monarchy, the divine right of kings, or of 
ecclesiastical tradition. In the large majority 
of instances they were inclined toward freer 
democratic life and opportunity. Born and 
bred with a deep seated notion of the rights 
of Englishmen, and coming into a world 
where frontier conditions prevailed and life 
was free from all surrounding influences of the 
/^past, it was inevitable that from the beginning 
\ tendencies should have been created toward 
L' the establishment of self-government, and 
/f| that the history of the colonies should have 
I^ been the history of the development of demo- 
cratic ideas. 

With the king and the home government 
three thousand miles away, without a no- 
bility and an established church, with very 



SECOND PERIOD, 1655-1682 61 

few conditions that made feudal incidents 
or practices necessary, the people who set- 
tled America were naturally inclined to 
consider before all else their own welfare ; 
and the needs of their own existence. They ) 
were settled in a wilderness, they endured 
the crude and often cruel hardships of their 
surroundings, they faced the circumstances 
of their own support under conditions that 
were always strenuous and severe. They 
had little place for form or ceremony, for | 
privilege or preference, for the rights or 
prerogatives of class. It was hardly to be j 
expected that they would sacrifice their own 
interests for the sake of landlords across the 
sea or for the benefit of a king and a kingdom 
that consistently deemed them but counters 
in its own game of commercial advantage. 
Between royal prerogative and mercantile 
policy on one side and a rough but impera- i^ 
tive instinct of self preservation on the other, 
there was bound to ensue a conflict, the 
first phases of which can be seen at the very 
outset of our colonial history. 



CHAPTER III 

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

It is evident that colonies extending 
through so great a portion of the temperate 
and torrid zones would show strildng differ- 
ences, even if their peculiarities had not 
been vastly increased by the circumstances 
attending their settlement and the varying 
religions and political influences which con- 
trolled and directed the activities of the people 
inhabiting them. It is not necessary to 
consider here the more extreme points of 
unlikeness. The rugged, hardy life of the 
Hudson Bay region stands in natural 
contrast to that of the tropical West Indies. 
These differences are manifest in themselves. 
Less evident are the underlying character- 
istics of the continental colonies which grew 
eventually into the United States of America, 
and less conspicuous their points of likeness 
and unlikeness. These features are not only 
interesting in themselves, but they were so 
inwrought into the very fibre of colonial life 
as to affect the future career of the nation. 

From the political and constitutional point 
of view the peculiarities of north and south 

62 



POLITICAL CHARACTERISTICS 63 

were determined at the very outset of the 
seventeenth century. In the main New Eng- 
land was a homogeneous community with 
the town as the unit of its settlement and 
popular control of affairs as the chief char- 
acteristic of its political life. Unlike the col- 
onists of Maryland, Virginia, and North 
Carolina, the New Englanders settled in 
compact, nucleated villages — little congre- 
gations of men and women of like minds, 
socially similar in temperament, clustered 
closely about the meeting-house, the village 
green, and the school. In Rhode Island the 
towns were more artificially formed than 
elsewhere, owing to the absence of religious 
unity, but even there in outward form at 
least the town conformed to the common 
type. Wherever the Pilgrim or Puritan 
found a resting place he set up a form of 
local life thoroughly characteristic of him- 
self and his traditions. He had lived in 
towns of old England and he had cultivated 
the soil in the open field, dwelling in close 
proximity to his fellows, owning land in 
small parcels, and using pasture and wood- 
land in common with his neighbors. In a 
majority of cases he had come to America 
not as an isolated individual but as a member 
of a group or company of Christians cov- 



64 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

enanted together with God, an indissoluble 
religious body which became the basis of the 
town in Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Con- 
necticut. Many of these communities drew 
up formal plantation covenants, declaring 
themselves to be "bodies politic"; while 
others organizing themselves as joint-stock 
companies for the purchase and distribution 
, of land became landed proprietors as well. 
^ In the possession and cultivation of his 
land the New Englander was burdened with 
no feudal obligations, for he owed no fealty 
and he paid no quit-rent. In New Hamp- 
shire where quit-rents were demanded by 
Mason, the payments were inconsiderable 
owing to the "perverse obstinacy" of most 
of the inhabitants; and when Fen wick, 
agent of the patentees of the short lived 
Saybrook settlement, proposed in 1643 to 
save the venture from bankruptcy by "a 
small rent out of every acre," he found that 
the people of New England deemed them- 
selves supreme lords of their own lands 
and that a quit-rent would not be borne. 
The New Englander held his land either as 
an outright gift or as his share of territory 
purchased from a common fund, and his 
tenure, subject only to the higher needs 
of the community, was for the most part 



POLITICAL CHARACTERISTICS 65 

absolute. Imbued with the idea of rehgious 
and poKtical equality for all the "godly men," 
he endeavored to divide evenly the advan- 
tages and burdens of the community by dis- 
tributing land in small and scattered parcels 
and by giving every one a share in whatever 
means of subsistence the town possessed. 
He forbade accumulation of landed property 
and knew nothing of communal holding of 
land. All undivided land was owned either 
by the original proprietors or by the town 
in its corporate capacity, thus exemplifying 
Winthrop's doctrine of individual ownership 
combined with common use. The inevitable 
result was the equality of all men before God 
in the church covenant, the equality of all men 
before the law in the plantation covenant, and 
the equality of all members of the commu- 
nity in matters of land holding and privilege. 
The elimination of quit-rents, primogeniture, 
escheat, and similar incidents found elsewhere 
among the colonies, tended to the develop- 
ment of a democratic spirit in New England. 
The peculiarities of town organization and 
life found a counterpart in the political sys- 
tem established by the colonists in New 
England. The charter which the Massa- 
chusetts Bay Company received from King 
Charles, February 27, 1629, granted exten- 



r 



66 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

sive governmental and legislative powers, 
such as the right to elect its own officers, 
to make its own by-laws, and to add to its 
members. In the exercise of its powers the 
company acted as a democratic body of 
shareholders, a fact that was destined to 
affect profoundly the governmental history 
of the colony, inasmuch as the company, 
instead of remaining in England and attempt- 
ing from there to establish a colony or 
colonies, itself removed to America and 
became a colony. In 1630 governor, deputy 
governor, and a majority of assistants sailed 
for New England, carrying with them their 
charter. Thus the company ceased to be a 
mere trading corporation, the object of which 
was to make money out of its ventures, and 
took instead the form of an incorporated 
group of undividuals seeking in a new 
country a permanent home and an oppor- 
tunity of w^orshipping God in their own way. 
The other colonies of New England shaped 
their governments more or less after that of 
Massachusetts, and thus there came into 
existence forms of political life in town and 
colony that with surprising uniformity placed 
the source of authority in all or a portion of 
the people. However much Massachusetts 
may have declared that democracy w^as not 



POLITICAL CHARACTERISTICS 67 

ordained of God and that her system was 
not democratic, and however much aris- 
tocratic distinctions may have prevailed in 
social life and religious intolerance influenced 
the policy of the New England colonies 
toward others, the fact remains that in New 
England there existed in the structure of the 
body politic little that was either feudal, 
ecclesiastical, or monarchical, and fewer 
changes had to be made in the succeeding 
century and a half to effect the complete 
democratization of the colonies there than 
anywhere else on the colonial seaboard. Only 
recently has Rhode Island thrown off her dis- 
trust of delegated power and introduced into 
her government the feature of a strong gover- 
nor with the right of veto on legislation. 

The colonists who set up these govern- 
ments were political as well as religious radi- 
cals, believers in equality among men, 
popular control of magistracies, and repre- 
sentative government. Men of similar views 
remained in England and played leading 
parts in the affairs of their time. Notable 
among them were such radical non-conform- 
ists as the Independents, who brought 
Charles I to his death and set up a minority 
government of the ' ' godly ' ' ; and the extreme 
radicals, democrats or levellers, with whom 



J 



68 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

the conservative Puritans of the type of 
Warwick, Barrington, Lord Saye and Sele, 
and John Pym had httle in sympathy, 
who voiced their opinions in the document 
known as The Agreement of the People, which, 
presented by the rank and file of the army to 
the Rump Parhament on January 20, 1649, 
advocated a government practically the 
same as that already at work in Rhode Island 
and Connecticut. But their plans, already 
on trial in New England, were rejected out 
of hand in old England where they were 
deemed subversive and dangerous. Only 
in a land free from ecclesiastical and monarch- 
ical tradition could they find favor. Eng- 
land at this time was not a seed ground for 
democracy, and it was no accident that be- 
fore Cromwell's experiments had run their 
course the English people were ready to 
return to the monarchy. After 1660, there- 
fore. New England and old England had 
little in common as far as political ideas and 
institutions were concerned. 

The governments of Virginia and Mary- 
land differed greatly in matters of detail 
but were similar in certain essential features, 
particularly when contrasted with the dem- 
ocratic system of New England. The settle- 
ment of Virginia on the banks of the James 



POLITICAL CHARACTERISTICS 69 

at first struck no deep root, and for a dozen 
years it was questionable whether it would 
live or die. The venture of the London Com- 
pany was one from which profit was sought, 
and unlike their compatriots in New Eng- 
land the early settlers in Virginia had not 
gone to America to escape religious or politi- 
cal persecution. At the beginning the colony 
possessed no power of its own to live, for it 
was governed, regulated, and chastised by the 
company in London, which gave it such life 
as it possessed. At first the colonists were 
men only; we hear of no women till 1608, 
when the first marriage took place; and the 
first child was not born until 1609 or 1610. 
Ship-loads of marriageable women were de- 
spatched by the company at various times, 
so that family life as well as emigration was 
artificially fostered. There was no such 
voluntary migration to Virginia as to New 
England; colonists were sought for by the 
company, encouraged by various induce- 
ments to go to a land the reputation of which 
was impaired by the nature of the climate 
and the great number of deaths ; and to 
obtain settlers it was necessary for some years 
"to take any that could be got of any sort 
and on any terms." Even as late as 1618 
vagrants from London were sent over, and 



70 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

j in common with other colonies Virginia was 
' burdened with criminals from British prisons, 
the importation of which she tried to prevent 
unsuccessfully by legislation as late as 1722. 
Thus among the people who settled Virginia 
there existed no homogeneity, no similarity 
of origin, customs, experience, political prin- 
ciples, or religious thought. 

In making their settlements the Virginia 
colonists were subject to none of those 
influences that drew the New Englanders 
into a close Congregational organization by 
towns. Very few of the Virginians were 
either Puritans or Separatists, and those few 
were bound by no church covenant or plan- 
tation compact. Though liberty of religion 
prevailed, the Church of England was made 
formally the established church of the colony 
and its clergy were supported by general 
taxation. There was but one plan of settle- 
ment, that provided by the higher authorities. 
The first town, Jamestown, was a fort 
within which were houses and a church; 
the second, Henrico, was also a fort; and 
neither bore resemblance to a New England 
town. Though the settlement spread grad- 
ually from the Falls (Henrico) to the mouth 
of the James, there was nowhere compactness 
of life or grouping of colonists. Coming to 



POLITICAL CHARACTERISTICS 71 

America with no definite plan of settlement 
in mind and having no common bond, re- 
ligious or otherwise, the Virginians felt 
more readily than the New Englanders the 
effects of climate, soil, and open country. 
The heat of the climate, the wide stretches 
of land, and the ease with which tobacco was 
cultivated, determined their manner of life, 
and we find them scattered along the banks of 
the rivers in private plantations, so far apart 
as to demand a loose political organization, 
first of hundreds and eventually of counties. 
The system of land distribution was a' 
matter of vital importance in the history 
of Virginia. In New England the final par- 
tition of the soil among the settlers was 
effected by the colonists themselves accord- 
ing to their own ideas. In Virginia, on the 
other hand, the company controlled the en- 
tire land system. At first no such thing as 
private property prevailed. Not until 1614 
was any land distributed to colonists, and the 
little that was given out was burdened with a 
quit-rent of corn and an obligation to labor 
for the company one month in the year. 
Not until 1618 did any general distribution 
take place. Even then, the acquiring of a 
title was difficult, and at first the land was 
largely controlled by shareholders of the 



72 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

company, two thirds of whom remained in 
England. Later, any emigrant who paid 
his own passage money might have fifty 
acres; but in the main the holdings were 
large and there were no such minute proper- 
ties as in New England. It has been esti- 
mated that from 1632 to 1650 the average 
area acquired by grant in Virginia was four 
hundred and forty -six acres and later grants 
often rose as high as twenty thousand acres. 
The grants steadily increased in size as the 
years passed, and were held, not in scattered 
parcels, but in compact masses forming wide 
and isolated farms. They were cultivated, 
not by the owner, but by white servants 
and negroes, neither of whom had any rights 
in the soil. The result of these conditions 
was social inequality; the country was di- 
vided into large plantations; accumulation 
of property in single hands became a natural 
and inevitable consequence, and a life essen- 
tially aristocratic arose. Such a condition 
was further emphasized by the establish- 
ment of the Church of England as the 
church of the colony, by the officialism that 
w^as sure to arise in a government where 
nearly all the appointments lay in the hands, 
not of the people, but of the governor and the 
crown, and by many incidents of feudal 



POLITICAL CHARACTERISTICS 73 

tenure. Lands were held in free and common 
socage, involving declaration of fealty and 
payment of quit-rent; succession was gov- 
erned by the law of primogeniture; and 
neglect to seat lands was legally followed 
by forfeiture and escheat. Virginia knew 
nothing of the small and scattered holdings, 
the widespread right of private ownership, 
and the equal division of property in case of 
intestacy that prevailed in New England. 
In the latter case the unit of agricultural 
and social life was essentially democratic, 
in the former it was thoroughly aristocratic. 
Virginia was, however, the first to enjoy 
the benefits of a representative government, 
but not until many years from her first 
foundation. By the first charter all the king's 
subjects in Virginia were to enjoy the liber- 
ties, franchises, and immunities of English- 
men, but just what was meant by that phrase 
in the year 1606 would probably be difficult 
to determine. That James I had no inten- 
tion of admitting self-government into the 
colony and that the Virginia Company of 
London at first deemed the settlement but a 
plantation and the people there but servants 
of the company, all the evidence goes to 
show. For the first eleven years Virginia was 
ruled by despotic governors acting under 



< 



74 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

instructions from England. Not until No- 
vember 28, 1G18, was the "great charter 
of privileges," designed by Sir Edwin Sandys 
and other m.embers of the company to be the 
constitutional basis of a self-governing colony 
in America, ratified and signed; and not 
until April 29, 1619, did it reach the governor 
of Virginia with instructions for its intro- 
duction. Under these instructions. Governor 
Yeardley summoned an assembly of repre- 
sentatives from the " towns,~liundreds, and 
plantations" of the colony wiiich met in the 
choir and nave of the church at Jamestown. 
Thus the creation of the Virginia House of 
Burgesses was not the act of the people 
themselves, and there is nothing to show that 
the company in granting this important 
constitutional privilege was influenced by 
complaints from the colony. This scheme 
of self-government through an elected house 
of burgesses did not spring out of the con- 
victions of the Virginia colonist. Popular 
government in Virginia differed in this respect 
from that of New England, where the right 
of the people to control government was a 
fundamental part of the political faith of the 
settlers. Governor, council, secretary, and 
other officials were commissioned by the crown 
in England, while the house of burgesses was 



POLITICAL CHARACTERISTICS 75 

elected by tlie people in Virginia. Such was 
the form of government that prevailed through 
the colonial period in all the royal colonies. 

Equally unlike New England and in many 
respects different from Virginia were the 
proprietary colonies of Maryland and Penn- 
sylvania. Indeed, in some particulars, Mary- 
land was unlike any of the other colonies, 
for it not only recognized certain incidents of 
feudalism but reproduced in all particulars 
the rights, jurisdictions, and immunities of a 
medieval fief. Sir George Calvert, made 
Baron Baltimore in the Irish peerage in 1G24, 
was the only one of the single proprietors 
during the decade before the Civil War to 
prosecute successfully his plan for a colony. 
Though the Maryland and Pennsylvania 
charters were similar in many respects, the 
half century of time and experience that sepa- 
rated them left visible traces in the text of 
the latter document. Baltimore, Penn, and 
the Carolina and New Jersey proprietaries 
owned the lands of their respective provinces 
as they owned any private estate of land, and 
though their tenure was not military, as 
had been that of some of the earlier and un- 
successful promoters, "holding of the crown by 
the sword," it was still feudal, for they made 
yearly payments in recognition of the king's 



76 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

suzerainty. These payments were actually 
made to the crown, and in the case of the 
South Carolina proprietors, who were always 
in arrears, amounted to a considerable sum. 

Thus their colonies were provinces or 
seignories, though differing greatly in the 
extent of feudal practice prevailing among 
them. Yet all could sub-infeudate their 
lands and could fix the services, customs, and 
rents as they might desire. They could 
erect manors, thus authorizing the holding 
of courts baron and leet, though none ever 
were so held except in Maryland. To them 
and their heirs, or their deputies, was granted 
authority to make laws for the province, 
with the advice and consent of the freemen 
or their representatives, and to issue ordi- 
nances in times of emergency or otherwise. 
They could appoint all officials and consti- 
tute all courts for the execution of justice. 
Thus neither Maryland, the Jerseys, the 
Carolinas, nor Pennsylvania were colonies in 
the New England sense of the word; they 
were feudal provinces. Baltimore, for ex- 
ample, was not only a proprietor, he was 
also the lord of a fief with almost vice- 
regal powers, and this constitutional peculi- 
arity has to be reckoned with, not only in the 
history of Maryland, but in that of all the 



POLITICAL CHARACTERISTICS 77 

proprietary colonies. In the charter to Penn, 
certain special requirements were inserted, 
due to the experience which the British 
government had had with its colonies dur- 
ing the preceding seventy -five years. Penn 
must keep an agent in England ready to 
answer before the English courts for any 
violations or neglects in the observance 
by the colony of the acts of trade; he or his 
deputy must send all laws to England for 
confirmation or disallowance within five years 
after their enactment; he must allow the 
colonists freely to appeal from the colonial 
courts to the king if they desired; he could 
not have full jurisdiction, as did Baltimore, 
over the levying of taxes and customs dues in 
the colony; and he must recognize the right 
of the bishop of London to appoint min- 
isters in the colony should a certain number 
of colonists so request. Thus Maryland and 
Pennsylvania, the only two proprietary col- 
onies that survived, stand in striking contrast, 
as far as their relations with the home govern- 
ment were concerned. The former was to a 
large extent beyond the reach of British 
authority, the latter was constantly liable to 
British interference. 

In local government and organization, 
Maryland and Pennsylvania differed widely 



78 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

from each other and from New England, 
Maryland in this respect resembhng Virginia. 
Even the first Maryland settlement, St. 
Mary's, was not a town, "extending in length 
by the water about five miles and in breadth 
upward toward the land not above one mile 
— in all which space, excepting only the pro- 
prietary's house and the buildings wherein 
the courts and offices were kept, there were 
not above thirty houses, and those at con- 
siderable distance from each other, and the 
buildings (as in all other parts of the prov- 
ince) very mean and little, and generally of 
the manner of the meanest houses in Eng- 
land." There were no other places that were 
called or could be called towns, "the people 
there not affecting to build near each other, 
but so as to have their houses near the water 
for convenience of trade, and their lands on 
each side of and behind their houses, by which 
it happens that in most places there are not 
thirty houses in a space of fifty miles." The 
efforts of the proprietary to create compact 
centres of population resulted in the estab- 
lishment of a few places, such as Oxford 
Town, Charles Town, Calvert Town, and 
Battle Town, which v/ere not really towns, 
but resembled towns more than did any- 
thing in Virginia. With the growth of the 



POLITICAL CHARACTERISTICS 79 

colony and the increase in the number of 
settlers the lands about the rivers emptying 
into Chesapeake Bay on both sides were 
occupied, and large plantations came into 
existence. Baltimore encouraged large hold- 
ings, and he and his successors erected more 
than seventy manors, of a thousand acres 
or more apiece, along the Potomac, the 
Patuxent, the Patapsco, and their tributaries. 
Each "lord" paid a quit-rent to the proprie- 
tary and enjoyed according to the terms of 
the grant "the royalties and privileges as 
were usually belonging to such manors in 
England." On two manors, St. Gabriel's 
and St. Clement's, courts leet and baron 
were held, and during the early years of their 
history the settlers indulged in many of the 
incidents and obligations of feudalism. There 
was no military service and there was little 
descent by primogeniture and only occasion- 
ally an entailed estate, but there were such 
seignorial privileges as advowson of churches, 
right of free hunting, and the holding of 
courts baron and leet with their medieval 
methods of land conveyancing, and there were 
freeholds and apparently in a few instances 
copyholds, for which provision was certainly 
made in the instructions of the proprietary. 
In Pennsylvania and the Jerseys the dis- 



80 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

tribution of land into parcels of great variety 
as to size and description took the form of 
land speculation in the interest of the pro- 
prietaries, but it did not prevent in either 
colony the erection of towns and cities. 
New Englanders, Dutch, and Quakers had 
already founded towns in the Jerseys, and 
the city of Burlington became an important 
commercial centre before the rise of Phil- 
adelphia. Penn made elaborate provisions 
for the settlement of his colonists in villages 
and boroughs, but his plans were success- 
ful only in part. Manors, plantations, and 
villages came into existence, largely under 
the control of the counties, but they pos- 
sessed very little local vitality. The only self- 
governing towns at first were those which 
Penn found on coming to his province — 
Newcastle and Chester (Upland), and the 
one self-governing borough that he consti- 
tuted, Germantown, forfeited its charter in 
1707. Afterward Chester, Bristol, Lancaster, 
and Carlisle were raised to this position of 
dignified independence. Throughout the 
colonial period Pennsylvania remained a 
colony of one city with its hinterland an 
agricultural area inhabited by settlers scat- 
tered in plantations or located in compact 
but not self-governing villages, thus consti- 



POLITICAL CHARACTERISTICS 81 

tuting a sort of compromise between the 
systems of New England and Virginia. 

Thus in central government and local 
organization, in land holding and distribu- 
tion, and in the many incidents of the life 
of the colonists, contrasts appear in the 
seventeenth century which are suggestive 
factors in northern and southern development. 
In government and legal practices New Eng- 
land had drawn away from old England 
more thoroughly than had Maryland and 
Virginia, which still retained social and gov- 
ernmental peculiarities that were similar to 
prevailing practices at home. Simplicity 
characterized the one; social formality to a 
certain extent the other. At Jamestown, 
every Sunday, we are told "the Lord Gov- 
ernor attended church in state accompanied 
with all the councillors, captains, other offi- 
cers, and all the gentlemen, and with a 
guard of fifty halberdiers in his Lordship's 
livery, fair red cloaks, on each side and be- 
hind him. The Lord Governor sat in the 
choir, in a green velvet chair, with a velvet 
cushion before him on which he knelt, and 
the council, captains, and officers sat on each 
side of him, each in his place; and when the 
Lord Governor returned home, ^ he was 
waited on in the same manner to his house." 



82 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

In Plymouth, on the other hand, the men of 
the congregation assembled "by beat of drum, 
each with his musket or firelock, in front of 
the captain's door; they have their cloaks 
on and place themselves in order, three 
abreast, and are led by a sergeant with beat 
of drum. Behind comes the governor in a 
long robe; beside him, on the right hand, 
comes the preacher with his cloak on, and 
on the left hand the captain with his side 
arms and cloak on, and with a small cane 
in his hand, and so they march in good 
order and each sets his arms down near 
him." The touch of religious simplicity 
in the one contrasted with the aristocratic 
stateliness of the other marks in exaggerated 
form a difference that did exist between Vir- 
ginia and New England. 

Yet it would be a mistake to believe that 
democracy and simplicity were the pre- 
vailing characteristics of the north, just as 
it would be an error to assert that Virginia 
was controlled by none but cavaliers even in 
colonial times. Though democracy pre- 
vailed in New England as a principle of 
government it was far from dominant as a 
rule of social life. Every part of New Eng- 
land had its aristocratic distinctions and its 
regard for the niceties of rank. The Massa- 



POLITICAL CHARACTERISTICS 83 

chusetts leaders, in the early years at least, 
considered the order of the magistracy and 
the rank of a gentleman very nearly synony- 
mous, and the Massachusetts Body of Liber- 
ties enacted that no true gentleman or none 
equal to a gentleman should be punished 
with whipping unless his crime was very 
shameful and his course of life vicious and 
profligate. Seats in meeting-houses, lists 
in college commencement programs, places 
at table or in processions, were regulated with 
extraordinary care. One-fourteenth only of 
those who came to New England had the 
distinctive title of "Mister," though many 
others won that honor later by faithful ofS- 
cial service. OflSce-holding was one of the 
most certain paths to social distinction; 
and in town and colony the people loved to 
honor with reelection after reelection those 
whom they knew to be worthy. In all the 
colonies, especially in Massachusetts and 
New Haven, the clergy were political leaders 
as well as moral guides, and their injunctions 
were deemed second only to the command- 
ments of God. Judges and magistrates 
stood with the clergy as leaders in the social 
order and with them shared the respect and 
obedience of the people. The code of law 
and morals was exceedingly severe and pri- 



84 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

vate life was rigorously regulated by law.^ 
The Massachusetts Body of Liberties, the 
Connecticut Code of 1650, the New Haven 
Code of 1655, and many separate statutes, 
passed after those dates, declared what men 
should and should not do. Even the famous 
Blue Laws of Connecticut were only an 
exaggerated expression of actual statutes. 

New England was before all else theologi- 
cal. The Word of God was always morally, 
and sometimes officially, the guide of life. 
Church was above state, and civil rulers, 
though elected by the people, were after all 
God's ministers for the guidance and correc- 
tion of all. Hence duty to God and fear of 
offending God dominated men's thoughts, 
and no care was given to the duty to kings or 
to fear of offending them. Neither statute 
nor code during the first half century made 
any reference to other sovereign than God, 
and sins against society were construed rather 
in a religious than in a social light. In their 
fear of idolatrous practices, in their attempt 
to regulate the observance of the Sabbath, 
in their formulation of a code of morals and 
social relations that went counter to many of 
the finest instincts of human nature, and in 
their rejection of all honest but "uncalled" 
men as unworthy to be saved and destined 



POLITICAL CHARACTERISTICS 85 

with infants unbaptised to be eternally 
damned, they made a God out of their own im- 
aginations and crushed out of themselves and 
others the humanizing sentiments of philan- 
thropy and love. The Puritan was not inten- 
tionally inhuman, but like the medieval monk 
he believed that beauty and pleasure, com- 
fort and joy were offensive in the sight of God. 
On the other hand the Puritan was very 
much like other men and often far from being ^ 
the narrow and stiff-necked religionist that 
tradition has made him. "Alas, alas, my 
dear lord," wrote that austere dogmatist 
of later years, John Cotton of Massachusetts, 
"I see by often experience the shallowness 
of my own judgment." "I pray you send me 
two or three sheets of gilded paper," wrote 
John Davenport of New Haven, "I am about 
to write to my Lord Keeper," and this man 
of all men who eschewed worldly vanities 
and the vain contrivances of men, sealed his 
worldly request with a worldly coat of arms 
in red sealing-wax. "We hope to live to- 
gether in the heavens tho' the Lord have 
denied that union on earth," wrote Roger 
Williams of Rhode Island to Lady Barrington, 
whose niece he wished to marry, and the great 
Tolerationist poured forth his heart in very 
human fashion on his disappointment in love 



86 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

and on the uncertainties of his future career. 
There are no more beautiful love-letters than 
those which John Winthrop the younger 
wrote to his wife. The Puritan frequently 
yielded to his sense of humor, and indulged 
his appetite for the good things of this world. 
Many a one could descend to the frivolity of 
a joke; Cotton Mather was a rare punster; 
and Samuel Stone of Hartford was "of a sud- 
den and pleasant wit." Numbers of the 
worthy clergy and magistrates smoked to- 
bacco, though Massachusetts classed tobacco 
smokers with idlers, vagrants, and other un- 
profitable persons, and Connecticut strongly 
disapproved of the practice, even when allow- 
ing it under certain stringent conditions. Gov- 
ernor Eaton of New Haven kept a hospitable 
table, and Samuel Sewall, the famous diarist, 
amid much sickness and sorrow enjoyed life. 
The gloomiest centre of Puritanism was 
Massachusetts, where religious feeling be- 
came strained and intense, and men grovelled 
before their maker and wrestled, like Cotton 
Mather for his stricken family, "with the 
God of Jacob as did Jacob of old for his." 
Connecticut generally took a saner view of 
religious matters, and Rhode Island at New- 
port in the eighteenth century not only vied 
with the aristocratic south in wealth, culture. 



POLITICAL CHARACTERISTICS 87 

and social activity, but was reading for its 
amusement the writings of Spenser and 
Johnson, Milton and MoHere, at a time when 
Endecott was burning witches in Salem and 
Sewall was arranging the coffins in the family 
vault at Boston as "an awful but pleasing 
Christmas diversion." 

Of contrasts in religious observance and 
faith and of education and learning too much 
can easily be said. There can be little doubt, 
however, that religious interests played a 
less conspicuous part in Maryland, Virginia, 
and the Carolinas in the seventeenth cen- 
tury than they did in New England, and that 
the standard of public morals was less highly 
maintained. Indifference in the observance 
of the Sabbath, drunkenness, and profanity, 
were common, as is evident from the frequent 
legal attempts made to control them, and 
temperance and prudence were virtues more 
honored in the breach than in the keeping. 
As a rule the clergy in Virginia were esti- 
mable and devout men, but -there were 
sufficient instances of the contrary to call 
down upon the Virginians the charge of 
loose living and ungodly conversation from 
the stern Puritan moralists. Maryland and 
North Carolina lent themselves more cer- 
tainly to this accusation, and Dr. Bray, who 



88 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

visited most of the colonies, gave in 1700 a 
melancholy account of their condition in his 
letter to the bishops, showing a great want of 
ministers in Maryland, and in North Carolina 
an almost complete lack of religious worship, 
except among the Quakers. In South Carolina 
no provision for a church was made until after 
1680. But with the entrance upon the scene of 
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel 
in Foreign Parts and the work of Keith and Tal- 
bot, who travelled for two years preaching in 
every colony, a new religious zeal was aroused, 
churches were founded, and proselytes secured. 
Puritanism was passing out of the earlier 
stage of vigor and youth and its theology and 
spirit were becoming hardened and stereo- 
typed. The ascendancy of the clergy was 
leading to intellectual and spiritual decay 
among the people, and to an overwrought 
condition of religious self-consciousness that 
was deadening to religious progress. In 
truth with the eighteenth century New Eng- 
land and the middle colonies needed quite as 
much as did Virginia the reinvigorating 
influence of the Great Awakening of 1740, 
to restore the old conditions of religious 
earnestness and enthusiasm which had come 
in with the founders. If in the one case an 
established church too often bred fox-hunt- 



POLITICAL CHARACTERISTICS 89 

ing parsons, idle curates, and perfunctory 
church worshippers, in the other a domineering 
body of clergy and elders produced religious 
apathy and intellectual torpor that remained 
scarcely changed until the preaching of 
Jonathan Edwards began in 1734. 

In educational matters the differences are 
more striking, for in New England the doc- 
trine that every community should have its 
school and schoolmaster tended in time to 
furnish a majority of the people with the 
rudiments of an education; while in the south 
the want of compact communities inevitably 
prevented the establishment of many free 
schools and threw the responsibilities of 
education upon each landed proprietor. Vir- 
ginia had no public schools and the planters 
had to educate their children either in their 
own homes, at private schools such as that of 
Symmes and Eaton, or in England, and in 
consequence education inevitably became a 
privilege of the wealthier class. Even as 
late as 1770, Governor Bull could speak of the 
great lack of good schools in South Carolina. 
The fact that in the south during the colonial 
period eduoation, whether at home or in Eng- 
land, on the plantation or in the private school, 
was for the few and not for the many, has left 
an indelible impress upon southern history. 



CHAPTER IV 

ECONOMIC LIFE AND INFLUENCE 

More exigent even than constitutional 
systems and religious and educational atti- 
tudes was the influence of topography, cli- 
mate, and staple products in determining 
the direction that colonial development 
should take. New England had few rivers 
and harbors, was broken by small mountain 
chains, and offered no wide stretching acres 
or single staple product adapted to plan- 
tation life. Virginia and Maryland on the 
other hand, with their great bays and rivers, 
veritable highways into the heart of the col- 
onies, with arable lands stretching from river 
to river and lying adjunct to great bodies of 
water like Chesapeake Bay, with their 
milder climate which led the colonists to 
seek the easier road to wealth and to scorn 
the harder pursuits that a colder climate 
encourages, not only became agricultural, 
but made one form of agriculture their absorb- 
ing interest. Before the downfall of the 
London Company tobacco had become the 
only staple that Virginia exported to Eng- 
land, and though Maryland raised fruit and 

90 



ECONOMIC LIFE AND INFLUENCE 91 

a little grain, bred cattle and trapped fur- 
bearing animals, her only commodity for 
export before 1740 was tobacco, slightly 
inferior in quality to that of Virginia be- 
cause the Marylanders took less pains with 
the leaves. Till the middle of the eighteenth 
century these colonies subordinated all crafts 
and industries and all varieties of staple 
products to the one commodity that would 
contribute most largely to their material 
welfare, and could be exchanged with the 
mother country for manufactured goods at a 
reasonable profit. And even to a greater 
extent South Carolina with her rice and 
indigo and the West Indies with their sugar 
staked their prosperity upon a single com- 
modity and so placed a severe handicap 
upon their future development. 

Briefly stated the factors which governed 
the economic development of the southern, 
middle, and northern colonies and remained 
persistent through the colonial era were 
these. In the south from Maryland to South 
Carolina manufacturing and commerce were 
subordinate to agriculture and traffic in 
furs; the staple products were carried in the 
ships of England or of other colonies, and 
only to a very silfiall extent in their own, to 
England or the Continent, and in return the 



92 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

manufactured goods of Europe were brought 
in large quantities to southern plantations 
to clothe the people or to furnish their homes. 
Thus the connection between these colonies 
and the mother country, as between the 
West Indies and the mother country, was 
a very close one, because the colonies fur- 
nished the tobacco, sugar, dye woods, indigo, 
rice, ginger, and cotton that England needed » 
On the other hand the middle and north- 
ern colonies furnished none of these things. 
They had fish and furs for export to England 
and the Continent and after much urging 
and the granting of bounties they shipped a 
small amount of pitch, tar, turpentine, and 
hemp, with a few masts for the use of the 
royal navy. But in the main they did not 
come into direct contact with England on 
the export side. The northern and middle 
colonies raised corn and vegetables and 
other farm products, they bred horses, cows, 
and pigs, they made pipe-staves and clap- 
boards, and built ships, pinks, snows, ketches, 
schooners, and sloops, and they sent all 
these articles and products off to the other 
colonies or to the West Indies. There they 
received money for their venture or they 
laid in a stock of sugar, molasses, and rum, 
some of which was consumed at home, some 



ECONOMIC LIFE AND INFLUENCE 93 

sent to England in exchange for manufac- 
tured goods, or some, chiefly liquor, they 
sent to hearten the fishermen off the coast 
of Newfoundland or to purchase slaves in 
Africa that were in their turn sold to the 
West Indies for more sugar and molasses, 
and so the triangular traffic went on. The 
centres of this trade were Philadelphia, New 
York, Boston, and especially Newport, the 
slave emporium and one of the greatest 
commercial centres of the north in the 
eighteenth century. Hither British merchant 
ships would come bringing those manufac- 
tured articles that the colonists might buy 
with the coin obtained in their traffic with the 
West Indies and the Continent, and thither 
an occasional New England vessel would go 
forth for a trip across the ocean with a cargo 
of West Indian commodities, and sell ship 
and cargo to some English factor. 

But the New Englanders were also the 
great masters of the coasting trade, pedlers 
at sea as well as on the land, doing a vast 
business in comparatively small quantities 
and engaged in a great number of petty 
domestic exchanges. More than any others 
among the colonists they were the distrib- 
uting agents for the produce of the entire 
colonial seaboard, circulating staples from 



94 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

one end of the coast to another. They were 
also fishermen, catching their own fish in 
New England waters or frequenting the 
harbors of Newfoundland, whence they 
would go forth, protected by British passes 
from capture by Algerine pirates, carrying 
cod, pilchards, salmon, herring, and "poor- 
jack" to Lisbon and cities of the Mediter- 
ranean, and return laden with European 
goods by way of England to America, or as 
was not infrequently the case directly to 
America, thus violating the navigation act 
of 1663. 

From this brief statement it will appear 
that commerce in the north differed vitally 
from that of the south. The northern cities 
became great business communities, with 
business houses and prominent business 
families, such as the houses of Hull and Fan- 
euil in Boston, the Browns, Wantons, Free- 
bodys, and Malbones of Newport, the De 
Lanceys, Rip van Dams, and Millses of New 
York, the Logans, Bohlens, McMurtries, 
Morrisses, and Willings of Philadelphia. 
With their docks and shipyards, their corres- 
pondence with agents in all parts of the world, 
their warehouses and their offices, these 
cities became emporia of trade, of intellec- 
tual activity, and scientific ingenuity. On 



ECONOMIC LIFE AND INFLUENCE 95 

the other hand in the south a strong trading 
class never came into existence; the planter 
and the plantation was the seat of business, 
the bay and the river was the highway to 
the private wharf where was stored the butt, 
cask, and hogshead that contained all tobacco 
not shipped in bulk. To this wharf, some- 
times at the planter's front door and some- 
times, especially in Virginia, many miles 
away from where the tobacco was raised, 
came the vessels twice a year from England 
bringing foreign goods, letters, and papers to 
the family on the great plantation, the wealth 
of which lay in its wide acres and the pros- 
perity of which was dependent on the rise 
and fall of tobacco. Thus Maryland, Vir- 
ginia, South Carolina, and the West Indies 
had no trading and artisan class, no supply 
of native grown food-stuffs, no diversity of 
colonial interests. They never developed 
the trading city, which in the northern col- 
onies was the abode of the merchant and the 
artisan, whose influence was to affect the 
history of the nation long after the southern 
planter as an economic factor had passed 
away. 

The significance of these contrasting con- 
ditions lies not only in the fact that the 
south remained a land of agriculture to the 



96 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

end of the colonial era, but also in the further 
fact, that when in the middle and northern 
colonies the wealth derived from commerce 
began to be supplanted by the wealth derived 
from manufacturing, the conditions were 
eminently favorable for a rapid extension of 
the shop and the factory. The south, even 
in her one city, Charleston, where the shop- 
keepers were foreigners and all banking, 
loans, and exchanges were in the hands of 
outsiders, never entered the stage of a wide 
and expanding industrial and manufacturing 
life. Even in the north during the colonial 
era manufacturing scarcely passed beyond 
the domestic stage, in which the colonists 
made their cheaper clothing, hammered out 
their own nails, and provided the necessary 
conveniences for comfortable living, never- 
theless conditions there were favorable for 
the industrial revolution when the time 
came — when, for example, after 1793 New- 
port, without water power in the days before 
the age of steam, gave way to Providence, 
the centre of a new economic life, in which 
the factory took the place of the sailing vessel 
as the leading source of wealth. The in- 
stinct to manufacture was alike inborn and 
developed in the New Englander, and though 
he never produced in colonial times anything 



ECONOMIC LIFE AND INFLUENCE 97 

that could be exported or could in any way 
come into competition with the manufac- 
tures of old England, the genius and the tem- 
perament, the town and the city were there. 
The real significance of these distinctions 
was to be seen after the Revolution in the 
famous controversies of the manufacturing 
north with the agricultural south over the 
adoption of tariff legislation. 

. These fundamental differences in polit- 
ical organization and economic life carried 
with them countless other distinctions in 
the social order. The fact that during the 
latter part of the colonial period all the col- 
onies outside of New England were royal or 
proprietary colonies, in which a majority 
of the officials were appointees of the king 
or of the proprietary, created a social caste 
that often looked to England for its models 
and standards of social conduct. Governors, 
lieutenant governors, councillors, secretaries, 
attorneys general, chief justices, and others, 
appointed under the great seal of England, 
the royal sign-manual, or the seal of the 
province, looked to England for their au- 
thority and in some cases for their pay, and 
formed a party distinct from and above the 
people as a whole. The governors, more 
frequently sent from England than selected 



98 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

from among the men of the colony, brought 
in social habits and customs, dress and fur- 
nishings that were rather English than col- 
onial, and, inasmuch as many of these men 
were profligate and corrupt, life at the gov- 
ernor's court became extravagant and politics 
often smacked of graft and plunder. The 
oflacials in the royal colonies, the only colo- 
nies directly under the eye of the home gov- 
ernment, formed a large and influential 
body of comptrollers, surveyors, naval offi- 
cers, and officers of admiralty sworn to 
perform their duties as they ought to per- 
form them in the interest of the government 
in England. Inasmuch as there were few 
such officials in New England, and only in 
Massachusetts after 1691 and New Hamp- 
shire after 1678 were there any regular ap- 
pointees of the crown, except an occasional 
custom official, it was inevitable that the 
social conditions there should differ widely 
from those in the south, and that the close 
union that existed between the governors and 
the governed, particularly in Connecticut 
and Rhode Island, should give greater social 
compactness to life in New England. In 
the southern and middle colonies, to a greater 
extent than in the north, the people were 
constantly recruited from the immigrant 



ECONOMIC LIFE AND INFLUENCE 99 

Huguenot, German, Swiss, and Scots-Irish, 
of the latter of whom only one in five went 
to New England, and the lower classes were 
increased by great numbers of indented 
servants, paupers, and transported crim- 
inals. Though the stigma of criminality was 
less conspicuous then than it is now — for 
many of the "King's Prisoners," as they were 
called, were transported for petty thefts 
and other trivial causes, — though many "crim- 
inals" were skilled mechanics welcome to 
the colonies, and though Pennsylvania, Mary- 
land, and Virginia endeavored by legislation 
to keep out the worst offenders, nevertheless 
such systematic immigration, continuing 
through the colonial period, tended to make 
class distinctions conspicuous and permanent. 
Furthermore in the south the ready means 
of communication with England, the pres- 
ence in London and other British ports of 
agents and correspondents with whom the 
southern planter kept a standing financial 
account, for tobacco was rarely paid for in 
actual coin, made it easy for the same 
planter to visit England, to send over his 
sons to be educated or to be trained as law- 
yers, or his daughters to enjoy the society 
of the great British metropolis. All returned, 
ripened by their experiences abroad, bringing 



100 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

back the modish fashions of the time — 
stocking or shoe buckle, periwig, purple 
coat or buff waistcoat or flowered silk gown, 
adding grace and charm to the manners 
learned in the older world. Thus equipped, 
forming an aristocracy of manners as well as 
of birth, the inhabitants of the coast region 
sought to control politics as well as fashion. 
Notably in Virginia and South Carolina 
political progress was marked by a series of 
contests between the older and newer sec- 
tions of the country. From the beginning 
of our history the struggle between the 
conservatism of the settled areas and the 
democracy of the frontier has been a factor 
of tremendous significance, and in its widest 
influence has been characteristic of New 
England as well as the south. In Virginia 
Governor Berkeley and his court met the first 
attack in Bacon's rebellion and were worsted; 
in the next century, when Scots-Irish and 
Germans had crept down from western 
Pennsylvania, the struggle was renewed and 
prolonged until the Revolution, when new 
leaders, Patrick Henry, Jefferson, and Madi- 
son, in large measure forced the issue with 
England against the contentment and con- 
servatism of the commercial class. In South 
Carolina, that colony of a single town, the 



ECONOMIC LIFE AND INFLUENCE 101 

aristocracy, settled in the city of Charleston, 
endeavored to guard by every means in its 
power the politics of the colony against the 
encroachments of the dwellers in the back- 
country, who were mainly Scots-Irish. The 
power of the Anglican church in the south 
was used to strengthen the hold of the aris- 
tocratic party on government, while the 
presence of the English parish system as the 
only form of local organization was a force 
influencing local elections. 

Thus throughout the entire colonial era 
the southern colonies showed greater traces 
of sectional and class distinctions — be- 
tween royal officials, the church, and the 
aristocracy on one side and the poor farmer, 
the servant, and the negro on the other, and 
between the older or tide-water section on 
one side and the newly settled back-country 
on the other. The gaiety of the life which 
centred in the governor's court or in the 
household of the rich planter was English 
in its exuberance, its fashion, its scorn of 
manual labor, and stood in striking contrast 
with the upland regions where frontier con- 
ditions and frontier habits of thought and 
dress prevailed. 

The Scots-Irish, who formed the second 
most important element composing the popu- 



102 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

lation at the end of the colonial period, had 
little in common with the Anglican of the 
coast. He was compacted of the sternness 
of the Covenanter with the wit and humor 
of the Irish and cared little for culture, or 
knowledge, or beauty; he was energetic, 
resourceful, and enduring, conspicuous in 
adventure and brave in war. Tenacious in 
his theological views, he was equally stubborn 
in his adherence to political dogmas, and 
whether it was the wilderness or the cate- 
chism or the government that opposed him, 
he fought with the same determination 
against all. He was strongest in Pennsyl- 
vania, where he opposed the rule of the 
Quakers and combined with the Germans to 
effect their overthrow; but he was also 
strong in the upland valleys of Virginia and 
the south, where he struggled with the 
Indians and the hardships of settlement on 
one side and the property holders of the coast 
and their class legislation on the other, en- 
deavoring to gain fair treatment and justice 
from the privileged and moneyed element 
that controlled the government. To a cer- 
tain extent similar struggles went on in Massa- 
chusetts and New York, but nowhere were 
the differences so marked, the rivalries so 
intense, the distinctions between rich and 



ECONOMIC LIFE AND INFLUENCE 103 

poor so well defined as in the colonies south 
of Mason and Dixon's line. The first great 
sectional contest in America lay between the 
individualistic and democratic frontier and 
the old tide-water settlement, where lived 
and ruled the royal oflScials and the men of 
property, who in the greater number of 
instances were bound by ties of interest and 
affection to the mother country. 

On the other hand the patriarchal organi- 
zation of southern society, the glimpses of 
the larger world frequently obtained by the 
planter and his children, and the many argu- 
ments over government arising from the 
controversies between the royal officials and 
the delegates of the people, gave rise in this | 
same aristocratic class to men of remarka- j 
ble character and ability. Some of the ' 
strongest of our early political leaders learned 
their first lessons in the law trials at the 
county court-house and in the assembly de- 
fending the claims of the popular assembly. 
Supported by the labor of others, looking 
down upon the trade and industry which 
was deemed so honorable an occupation in 
the north, and finding their inspiration in 
the speeches of English lawyers and parlia- 
mentary leaders, many a southern planter 
became a statesman of great oratorical power 



104 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

and personal charm. In this respect the 
leisure of the southerner stands in striking 
contrast with the enterprise and energy of 
the merchants and traders of the northern 
colonies, who as busy men were less ready to 
give their time to political speech making, and 
as capitalists were averse to provoking dis- 
order and confusion. The southern gentle- 
man, less concerned as he was with the petty 
politics of village and town, was more inter- 
ested in the larger aspects of England's 
imperial legislation, and suffering but little 
from the effects of her mercantile and com- 
mercial policy was willing and able to take 
a larger view of political questions and to 
appeal to the precedents of the past as argu- 
ments in favor of the preservation of things 
as they were. Though education was less 
widely spread in the south than in the north, 
the few were better educated, more widely 
read, and possessed of a higher degree of 
cultured intelligence than were the majority 
of those who received a grammar school 
education in the New England towns. 
Throughout the New England colonies igno- 
rance of the mother country, of her policy, 
government, and empire was widely prev- 
alent, and as a result the men of the New 
England town were often then, as they have 



ECONOMIC LIFE AND INFLUENCE 105 

been since, narrow in sympathy, local in 
interest, and parochially minded when large 
issues were at stake. 

Thus stood the colonies from Maryland 
southward in contrast with the energetic, 
busy, self-centred population of the north. 
As all the colonies became older and the 
people were transformed from Englishmen 
into Americans many of the differences 
inevitably tended to disappear. Feudal 
practices gradually passed away and, except 
in a few matters of land tenure, the few 
lingering traces of feudalism were effectually 
removed when the constitutions of the revolu- 
tionary period were drafted. More important 
still, differences in forms of government \^ 
became less and less striking, as in the long 
political struggle in the royal colonies between 
the executive, represented by the governor, 
and the legislative power, represented by the 
popular assemblies, the governors and coun- 
cils were shorn of much of their authority, 
and in actual government the southern 
colonies approached the type presented in ^ 
New England. The real difference between 
the north and the south in colonial times 
lay not in politics, law, religion, education, 
in manners, customs, or mental attitudes. 
It is to be found in the fact that the south- 



106 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

ern colonies from the beginning to the end 
of the colonial period represented a purely 
• agricultural form of life without towns, trad- 
ing communities, variety of industrial inter- 
i/l ests and competition, and consequently 
I without that ingenuity and scientific skill 
! which is essential to the spread of democratic 
ideas and the increase of wealth. 



CHAPTER V 

THE NAVIGATION ACTS AND BRITISH CONTROL 

The United States of America is the only 
one of the great powers of the world to be a 
colonial dependency during its earlier years. 
From 1607 to 1783 the people of this country 
were the subjects of Great Britain. Impor- 
tant, therefore, as were the life and institu- 
tions of the colonies themselves in preparing 
the way for the growth of the great demo- 
cratic republic, of equal importance were the 
administration and policy of the mother 
country in her management of them. To 
tell the story of the colonies, and not to tell 
the story of the sovereign power that con- 
trolled them, is to leave our tale shamefully 
incomplete. Only in the study of that policy 
can we find the explanation of the American 
Revolution, whereby England's colonies be- 
came independent states and an independent 
American nation was born. 

In the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
tury the modern notion of a self-governing 
colony had not been conceived. No clear 
idea of colonies as colonies apart from their 
value to the mother country had ever. 

107 



108 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

entered the minds of British statesmen in 
the seventeenth century, and even to the 
end of the colonial era Englishmen looked on 
the colonies as plantations to be adminis- 
tered for the benefit of the mother country. 
It is a significant fact that the instructions 
for the management of trade and plantations 
issued in 1782, after the American colonies 
had all but won their independence, are word 
for word the same as those drafted in 1696, 
eighty-seven years before. As in principle 
and purpose the instructions of 1696 are the 
same as those of 1670 and 1672, we can say 
that for more than a century, through periods 
of constitutional change and imperial expan- 
sion, religious upheaval and colonial revolt, 
the officiaL declaration of policy toward 
trade and foreign plantations remained unal- 
tered in a single particular. Whatever 
changes might be effected in the details of 
administration, whatever rules might be 
laid down by one department or another of 
the British government to meet special con- 
ditions or emergencies, and however much 
individuals might find fault with the system of 
management at Wliitehall, the fact remains 
that during our colonial period England's idea 
of the place of the colonies in the British 
system was unchanged and unchangeable. 



THE NAVIGATION ACTS 109 

The reason for this is not far to seek. 
Though the colonies were on royal soil the 
king had done nothing to promote them, 
having never started a single movement for 
the establishment of a colony on his western 
frontier. He gave legal sanction to private 
enterprises and took under his immediate 
protection colonies that had been founded 
through the efforts and at the expense of 
corporations and proprietors; but he did 
nothing on his own account, partly because 
of inadequate resources, and partly because 
he and his advisers viewed distant planta- 
tions as only factors in promoting trade 
and finance and therefore to be left to private 
initiative. Though the state might regulate 
trade by laying down the rules to be followed, 
it did not look upon trade as a government 
undertaking. From this it follows that 
England's colonial policy, instead of being a 
broad statesmanlike policy with the interest 
of the colonies at heart, was a narrow mer- 
cantile or commercial policy with the interests 
of the mother country at heart. Through- 
out the period from 1660 to 1783 trade was 
in the ascendancy, and England's leading 
men viewed these far-off territories from the 
standpoint of trade and profit. The colonies 
were to be treated as sources of supply, and 



no THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

those that furnished the largest part of the 
commodities that England needed were the 
most important in their eyes. 

It was a cardinal principle of England's 
merchants and financiers that the kingdom 
should have more sellers than buyers, be- 
cause selling meant that other nations were 
dependent on England for their supply, 
while buying meant that England was de- 
pendent on other nations, a situation that 
statesmen and merchants were exceedingly 
anxious to avoid. They discovered very 
early where lay the commercial weaknesses 
of the kingdom and looked to the colonies 
to supply its deficiencies. They encouraged 
the search for gold, silver, and copper, 
whether in mines or wrecks, because they had 
no mines at home; they urged the colonists 
to plant vines to relieve them from depend- 
ence on the wines of France, to raise spices 
and tropical fruits to relieve them from 
dependence on the Dutch and Portuguese 
who controlled the eastern trade, to catch 
fish in Newfoundland and New England 
waters to relieve them from dependence on 
the superior herring fleets of Holland, to 
produce naval stores to relieve them from 
dependence on the Scandinavian and Baltic 
provinces. The capitalists and promoters 



II 



THE NAVIGATION ACTS 111 

of the seventeenth and even of the eighteenth 
centuries saw in the forest lands of America 
endless supplies of potash for their glass, 
soap, and woolen manufactures, of salt- 
petre for their gunpowder, and of tar, pitch, 
turpentine, and hemp for the rigging and 
calking of their ships. They dreamed of the 
West Indies and Florida as a botanical gar- 
den where could be raised the spices, drugs, 
and fruits of the east. Ginger, cloves, pepper, . 
nutmegs, cinnamon, and other spices; jalap, 
balsam, licorice, castor oil, and other drugs; 
madder, indigo, senna, and such dye woods 
as fustic, logwood, and braziletto; pome- 
granates, figs, oranges, lemons, and other 
fruits; rice, cotton, and sugar — these were 
the staples that England could not produce 
at home and these with cocoa were the com- 
modities that to the English merchant and 
the English epicure — craving variety and 
novelty in the food supply — were becoming 
a necessity at this time. Could these products 
be obtained from England's own colonies by a 
system of half profits, a practice early tried 
but always without success, or by exchange 
with her own manufactured articles, it would 
save much good coin to the realm and would 
add to the royal exchequer — never too full 
under the Stuart regime — a welcome sum in 
customs receipts and excise duties. 



112 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

This was the origin of England's poHcy 
and this was the end toward which all 
British control was directed. Certainly not 
at first and certainly not at all as a primary 
motive were colonies to be fostered as centres 
of an independent political and economic 
life, bound to the home government only by 
ties of loyalty and affection. Plantations 
they were, not colonies, and plantations they 
remained to the end of the era. As such 
they would be aided and protected; as 
they grew stronger they would have addi- 
tional opportunities and privileges, but under 
no circumstances were they to fail in their 
first duty of contributing to the support of 
the mother country in the way that her 
statesmen might direct. The colonies must 
engage in such form of commercial and 
industrial activity as would be advanta- 
geous, not to themselves, but to the common 
country, they must engage in no enterprise, 
manufacturing or other, that would injure 
England's interests, they must send their 
products to England only, the vent and staple 
of all colonial wares, and they must buy 
what they needed to buy of England only or 
through her as an intermediary. 

In one respect at least the practice never 
coincided with the theory. The southern 



THE NAVIGATION ACTS 113 

and West Indian colonies never did fulfil that 
wonderful dream of a tropical east grafted 
onto a tropical west that influenced plan- 
tation councils and merchants during the 
seventeenth centuries. Fruits, drugs, and 
spices, silk, flax, and hemp never formed 
any considerable item in the colonial trade 
of that day. Sugar, ginger, rice, indigo, and 
dyewoods were supplied in varying quanti- 
ties, but greater than these was the staple 
product that at the beginning won out against 
all comers. Tobacco, that "scurvy weed," 
as the Old Providence Company called it, 
became the leading colonial product, and 
though other staples came in later to com- 
pete with it, none could surpass it, except 
possibly sugar, and no effort of home govern- 
ment or private company could check its 
rapid increase. Though men of the time 
deemed its use a hygienic and moral evil, 
though they condemned tobacco smoking 
as a form of debauchery as debasing as 
drunkenness and opium smoking are deemed 
today, tobacco proved to be the only con- 
tinental American staple that brought in to 
planter, merchant, and customs oflScer any 
adequate return. During the seventeenth 
century Virginia, Maryland, Bermuda, Old 
Providence, St. Christopher and other Lee- 



114 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

ward Islands, and Guiana all produced 
tobacco, and in the end company, proprietor, 
and home government bowed before its 
supremacy. The prosperity of the early 
colonies was built upon smoke. 

The tobacco trade began the shaping of 
English policy and determined the direc- 
tion that her interests should take. Before 
parliament had placed the subject on the 
broader foundation of a statute, the Privy 
Council, as early as 1621, had issued its 
orders compelling the colonists of Virginia 
to send all their tobacco to England and 
forbidding all foreigners to trade with the 
colonies. In the commercial rivalry with 
the Dutch that followed, the Rump Parlia- 
ment under the Commonwealth passed an 
ordinance in 1651, requiring that such trade 
should not only be confined to England but 
should be carried only in -ships owned by 
English people or by the colonists, and 
manned by English masters with a crew, 
three quarters of which at least should be 
English. The act was not thoroughly en- 
forced and the Dutch continued to trade 
with the colonies, in spite of it, until, after 
the Restoration, the feeling in England 
became so strong as to demand the embodi- 
ment of these principles in acts of parlia- 



THE NAVIGATION ACTS 115 

ment. Consequently, three great acts were 
passed in 1660, 1663, 1672, which repeated 
the former commands and added to them. 
England's commerce must be carried in 
England's ships, though foreign built ships 
might be used. Even this exception was 
withdrawn in 1662, and Ireland, which was 
included at first within the privileges of the 
act, was debarred in 1670. In the act of 
1660 the former orders of the Privy Council 
regarding the bringing of tobacco to England 
only were given a wide extension, and sugar, 
cotton, indigo, ginger, and dyewoods, and 
later rice, molasses, beaver skins, cocoa, 
copper, and naval stores, were barred 
entirely from the foreign market. When in 
the operation of the act it was found that the 
colonists were carrying these commodities 
from one colonial port to another and then, 
deeming the law fulfilled, were sailing with 
them directly to Europe, the act of 1672 
was passed. This act required that a duty, 
apparently equal to that imposed at the 
time in England, should be paid at the colo- 
nial port of entry, in case the ship captain 
would not bind himself by certificate to 
carry the commodities to England. When in 
1696 the matter was taken up again the stat- 
ute declared that even if the duty were paid 



116 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

in the colony the commodity if reshipped must 
be taken to England anyway, and from there 
if desired transshipped to the Continent. This 
payment of a British customs duty in the colo- 
nies gave rise to the "plantation duty" and 
to the establishment of a corps of collectors 
who received it and transmitted it to England. 
The acts thus far defined favored New 
England as against the other colonies, 
because the enumerated commodities were 
nearly all of exclusive southern or West 
Indian growth. But in 1663 an act was 
passed touching a new aspect of the case 
and affecting New England as well as the 
others. This act declared that all commod- 
ities imported into the colonies from the 
Continent should be brought to England 
before shipment to America. This meant 
that all imported articles which the colonies 
used must come from England, even though 
such articles might be of foreign manufac- 
ture. A few exceptions were allowed, such as 
salt and "victual," and wines from Madeira 
and the Azores, which were used in the 
colonies before they were used in England, 
but the exceptions were comparatively tri- 
fling. The ships were, of course, to be English 
built, and three-fourths of the mariners 
English subjects. The captain on arriving in 



THE NAVIGATION ACTS 117 

a colonial port must register his name, the 
ship's name, cargo, tonnage, and other 
details, with a person properly appointed to 
receive them, a requirement that brought 
into existence the naval officer, the first of 
whom seems to have been appointed for 
Jamaica in 1676. 

By these acts the commercial policy of 
England was formally defined by statute, 
but for the first thirty years the laws were 
not strictly obeyed. Licenses were issued, 
particularly to the ships of Scotland, which 
kingdom, with Ireland and the Isle of Man, 
lay outside the privileged area and was for- 
bidden to trade directly with the colonies, t 
In 1665 an order in council allowed the use 
of foreign built ships manned by seamen 
of any nation in amity with England, and 
this order remained in force until 1668. The 
law was entirely dispensed with during the 
war with the Dutch in 1672. At other times, 
however, it was ordered to be strictly en- 
forced, and in consequence complaints poured 
in, particularly from Barbadoes, Virginia, and 
New England, and the general charge was 
made that the acts of trade were seriously 
injuring the commerce of the plantationso 
Breaches of the acts were committed in the 
West Indies, New York, and New England, 



118 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

particularly in connection with the Irish 
and Scottish trade, and the rumors on this 
point became so definite that in 1675 the 
king issued a vigorous proclamation, com- 
manding the enforcement of the laws and 
calling on colonial governors to see that the 
proclamation was executed. But the effect 
was shght. Massachusetts with consistent 
disregard of the royal orders continued to 
trade freely where she liked, until, with the 
arrival of Edward Randolph as surveyor of 
customs in 167G, the evidence to this effect 
became so overwhelming that the colony 
lost its charter in 1684. 

So lax did the whole system of adminis- 
tration become that finally in 1696 a new act 
was passed, designed to make more efficient 
the machinery of control. Colonial govern- 
ors were reminded of their duty in no un- 
certain terms and mandatory instructions 
were sent to America. The powers of col- 
lectors and surveyors were precisely stated, 
and their appointment and supervision were 
taken out of the hands of the colonies and 
given to the Treasury and commissioners 
of customs in England. Naval officers, at 
first appointed by the governors, were made 
responsible to the British custom board, 
and were eventually appointed by the crown. 



THE NAVIGATION ACTS 119 

And finally, the colonies were strictly en- 
joined to pass no laws contrary to the act. 
As a corollary to the act, a few years later, 
vice-admiralty courts were erected in the 
colonies to try cases of illegal trading, and 
the number of officials directly concerned 
with the enforcement of the acts in America 
steadily increased. Thus at the end of the 
seventeenth century England had stated in a 
clear and forcible manner her determination 
to confine the trade of the colonies within 
the bonds of her commercial system. 

Supplemental to these regulations regard- 
ing trade were the acts passed forbidding 
the colonists to indulge in any form of man- 
ufacturing, partly so as not to decrease the 
amount of raw materials produced in Amer- 
ica, and partly to prevent any form of colo- 
nial competition with the manufacturing 
interests at home. England would supply 
the colonists with manufactured goods, 
either from her own supply or from the Con- 
tinent through her own ports. This prohi- 
bition was a well understood matter in Amer- 
ica. Men talked about it and on occasion 
could use the threat of manufacturing as an 
argument against some of England's demands. 
Governors and others watched for indica- 
tions and reported suspicious movements 



120 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

promptly, and parliament at sundry times 
stirred by the manufacturers in England, 
passed acts — formal statutes — forbidding 
the manufacture of woollens, hats, and iron 
and steel wares in America. In 1733 it 
passed a Molasses Act to compel the New 
Englanders and others to buy their molasses, 
sugar, and rum of British instead of foreign 
colonies in the West Indies. But before 
1764 all these acts were trifling as compared' 
with the navigation acts. The south had no I 
manufactures, New England none for export, 
and the act of 1733 was consistently violated. 
As England had only a commercial and 
not a colonial poKcy it was inevitable that 
she should develop no system of adminis- 
tration that had other than a commercial 
aspect. With a skill characteristically British 
she made use of the existing machinery of 
government to carry out her program. She 
introduced no strictly new features, being 
content to adapt, and in some cases to en- 
large, those that would have existed had no 
colonies ever been founded. She established 
during the colonial period no department 
or board for the sake of the colonies alone. 
Except in a few minor cases no official was 
ever appointed in England that would not 
have been appointed for the ordinary busi- 



THE NAVIGATION ACTS 121 

ness of the realm, and even the colonial 
governor, though the office in its develop- 
ment naturally assumed new characteristics, 
was no new invention. The titles of other 
officials were familiar to all Englishmen, and 
the system of collectors, naval officers, and 
vice-admiralty courts was merely the extension 
to the colonies of the larger system at home. 
But England's own constitutional and 
administrative organization underwent great 
changes during the seventeenth and eight- 
eenth centuries. The institutions of the 
seventeenth century were largely transformed 
in the eighteenth, and the governmental 
situation in 1750 was very different from that 
in 1660. Between these years England 
passed, constitutionally speaking, from a 
medieval to a modern state. Before 1689 
governmental methods were largely royal 
and personal; after 1714 they were to all 
intents and purposes departmental and 
official. During the period of settlement 
"we read much of the king, his chancellor, 
treasurer, and admiral, his council and com- 
missions; after 1714 we find a series of 
-great departments, the Admiralty, the Treas- 
ury, the War Office, and a group of state 
officials, such as the secretaries, filling the 
scene. The seventeenth-century system of 



122 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

administration was medieval and in a sense 
feudal; that of the eighteenth century was 
modern, civil, and largely impersonal. 

Properly speaking, during the whole colo- 
nial period, the ultimate executive authority, 
in all that concerned the colonies, was the 
king and the Privy Council; but before 
1689, the two in combination, constituting 
the king in council, shared their authority 
with no one. Subordinate departments 
hardly existed, and subordinate officials, 
such as the lord high treasurer and the lord 
high admiral, were the king's servants, 
however important they might be. The 
various councils and commissions appointed 
to look after trade and the colonies were 
simply advisers of the crown, and could be 
created and abolished at will. The Privy 
Council might take into its own hands all 
the functions temporarily exercised by such 
bodies, as it did in 1674, when the council 
of 1672 was dissolved, and it could perform 
the duties itself through a committee of 
its own, as from 1674 to 1696, when the 
supervision of trade and the plantations was 
in the hands of the Lords of Trade. The 
point is that nearly to the end of the seven- 
teenth century the king and the council and 
their advisory boards and committees were 



THE NAVIGATION ACTS 123 

in absolute control of all colonial business 
and shaped an administrative policy for the 
colonies that was to last but little changed 
for a century. 

From the beginning the duty of these 
councils and committees was to regulate and 
promote, not the welfare of the colonies as 
such, but the trade and commerce of the 
kingdom. The plantations were at all 
times secondary to trade, and the trade 
with which these bodies were concerned was 
the entire trade of the kingdom. With trade 
went its concomitants, manufactures, indus- 
try, the poor, imports and exports, pro-| 
duction and distribution, free trade andj 
monopoly, improvement of ports and har- 
bors, customs, impositions and excise, trade ^ 
practices of foreign nations, and methods^ 
whereby the competition of other nations 
might be met and overcome. Thus these 
boards of control performed the functions 
of many modern commissions, of labor and 
commerce, tariffs, health, and emigration. 
Under such circumstances no adequate colo- 
nial policy could be evolved that was not 
merely an adjunct to a commercial policy, 
and the measure of British colonial control 
can be determined only in terms that are 
largely economic and financial. 



124 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

But even when viewing colonial interests! 
from the commercial point of view, the Privy- 
Council and the subordinate boards busied 
themselves with a great variety of colonial 
matters. The orders of the council and the 
instructions to and proceedings of the boards 
show that the colonies were frequently before 
their minds and in their hearts. If they were 
to improve the trade of the kingdom it was 
necessary that they know all about the 
settlements beyond the seas and see that 
nothing happened to injure these important 
territories. They inquired into the general 
state of the colonies, obtained full informa- 
tion regarding councils, assemblies, courts of 
justice, courts of admiralty, legislative and 
executive powers, statutes and ordinances, 
militia, fortifications, arms, and ammunition. 
They found out all they could about bound- 
aries, land, mines, staple products, and 
manufactures, rivers, harbors, and fisheries, 
and received statistics of population, immi- 
gration, shipping, and revenues. They made 
honest efforts to discover the obstacles to 
trade and how they could be removed, the 
advantages and how they could be increased, 
and they were interested in all measures 
taken for the instruction of the people and the 
maintenance of the ministry. They entered 



THE NAVIGATION ACTS 125 

into frequent correspondence with the govern- 
ors, urged upon the latter the necessity of 
keeping the peace with their neighbors and 
with the Indians, and of guarding, should 
war break out, the persons, goods, and pos- 
sessions of the settlers. 

This was the field within which the Privy 
Council and the boards acted in the seven- 
teenth century, but it must not be forgotten 
that they did all these things in order to 
make the colonies profitable to the crown. 
Quarrels and disputes only hindered the 
growth of the plantations; lands granted 
but unoccupied and uncultivated were value- 
less to Great Britain; New Netherland in 
the hands of the Dutch was a distinct menace 
to British commerce with the colonies; an 
independent Massachusetts, persistently ig- 
noring the acts of trade and the commands of 
the king, was assuming a position that could 
not be tolerated, if dependency on the crown 
was the essential status of a colony; many 
small, separate colonies, such as England 
tried to unite in 1686 under Andros and 
afterward to bring directly under the au- 
thority of the king, were a weakness in time 
of danger and a "great and growing prejudice 
to the king's affairs in the plantations," and 
should not be allowed to remain outside the 



12G THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

king's control; wasted and plundered colonial 
territory, such as would result from attacks 
by the French and Indians, or territory lost to 
England and in the hands of her enemies, was 
of no value to either statesmen or merchants. 
Thus in the seventeenth century control 
over the colonies was measured by the ease 
and success with which they could be man- 
aged in the interest of British plans for the 
enriching and strengthening of the king- 
dom. In the earlier years of settlement the 
crown had allowed proprietors and corpo- 
rations to stand between it and the colonies 
and to determine in large part the govern- 
ment which the colony was to possess. Hence 
had arisen the great variety of forms and 
institutions in America, from the democracy 
of New England to the autocratic system 
first introduced into New York and the mil- 
itary governnments of Newfoundland and 
Nova Scotia. But gradually there began to 
take shape the idea of a more uniform and 
centralized system of colonial control where- 
by the usefulness of the colonies might be 
more effectively developed, and a self-suffic- 
ing economic empire might be built up under 
the immediate control of the British crown. 
Jamaica was a crown colony, Virginia and 
Barbadoes had become such, and in the 



THE NAVIGATION ACTS 127 

decade from 1680 to 1690 New England, the 
Jerseys, Maryland, and Bermuda were 
brought into line, though in part this arrange- 
ment was to prove but temporary. How far 
this attempt to transform proprietary and 
corporate colonies into royal provinces re- 
presents a definite policy, we need not in- 
quire, but it was continued in the next 
century when the Jerseys, the Carolinas, 
Bahamas, and Georgia were added, and if 
the Board of Trade had had its way the other 
colonies would have been added also. The 
main point is, that Englishmen were awak- 
ening to the fact that the old laissez-faire 
system of the seventeenth century, according 
to which the government regulated trade 
but took very little direct interest in colonial 
administration, was proving hopelessly inad- 
equate and the conviction was abroad, partic- 
ularly among those whose business it was to 
inform themselves of conditions in America, 
that, if the plantations were to occupy 
the place that England intended that they 
should occupy, and if they were to be com- 
pelled to obey the trade regulations which 
England intended they should obey, they 
must all be directly controlled by the crown. 



CHAPTER VI 

IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION IN THE EIGHT- 
EENTH CENTURY 

The revolution of 1688, the consequences 
of which were not determined till 1702, and 
perhaps not fully determined till after 1714, 
marks in a general way the dividing line 
between the old constitutional system and 
the new. The crown, though retaining its 
prerogative rights under William III and in 
a measure under Anne, finally ceased to be a 
guiding factor in government and its place 
was taken by the great officers of state, who, 
though ministers of the prerogative in origin 
and in large part remaining so legally, were 
becoming more and more ministers of parlia- 
ment, particularly after 1746, and heads of 
independent departments. The Privy Coun- 
cil, though retaining its dignified position as 
one of the oldest and most commanding of 
all the organs of government, and still influ- 
ential as the ultimate authority in colonial 
affairs, was fast losing its place as a deliber- 
ative and originating body. It still retained, 
when sitting as a committee of the whole 
council, extensive functions, and no colonial 

128 



IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION 129 

law could be disallowed or confirmed, no 
appeal or complaint heard, no governors' 
commission or instructions issued, except 
by itself. Though losing much of its 
importance in the presence of the great 
officials and departments that were actu- 
ally running the affairs of the kingdom, it 
was no figure-head as far as the colonies 
were concerned. 

Parliament was extending its powers and 
taking over many of the functions of the 
executive, particularly after the middle of 
the century, when royal proclamations, orders 
in council, and instructions to the governors 
were proving insufficient to check the ag- 
gressions of the colonial assemblies. Par- 
liamentary statute was taking the place of 
the royal order as the final authority in 
shaping the constitution. As the king and 
Privy Council fell into the background, the 
secretariat and the departmental boards 
rose into prominence, and government by 
party, cabinet, and executive officials and 
commissions characterized the period. 
Though the king's sign-manual, the great 
seal, and the order in council were still neces- 
sary, as they are today, to give legal warrant 
to acts of government not regulated by stat- 
ute, they tended to become in the eighteenth 



130 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

century legal formulae registering the recom- 
mendations of officials and departments. 

What were the bodies that had to do with 
plantation during this second period of our 
history? The tale is more complex than for 
the period before 1689. We still have the 
king in whose name all commissions were 
issued, except those of the customs officials 
in America. We have also the Privy Council, 
of importance chiefly when sitting as com- 
mittee, concerning itself but little with gen- 
eral colonial business, though still a factor 
of the highest importance in certain speci- 
fied directions. We have parliament entering 
into a wider field of activity, putting forth 
an increasing number of statutes funda- 
mentally different from those issued in the 
seventeenth century, calling for information 
and elaborate reports from boards and 
departments, the members of which generally 
sat in the House of Lords or the House of 
Commons and presented bills of interest to 
their particular board or department; ap- 
pointing committees to consider colonial 
questions and summoning before it the 
advocates or opponents of a particular meas- 
ure. We have the secretary of state for the 
southern department, now the influential 
head of a separate office of government, into 



IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION 131 

whose hands was coming a vast mass of 
foreign, domestic, and colonial business. He 
was no longer the mere secretary who con- 
ducted the correspondence, or even the 
representative of the king in the latter's 
communications with the council, as under 
William III, but had become the aggressive 
head who initiated policies and asserted the 
right to carry them out. 

After king. Privy Council, and secretary 
of state came the great independent depart- 
ments of the Treasury and the Admiralty, 
possessing executive functions as depart- 
ments of state. The financial system of 
England with which the colonies came into 
frequent and persistent contact consisted 
of three parts: the treasury board, after 
1733 in a new building at the Cockpit, which 
controlled the financial policy; the excheq- 
uer at Westminster Hall, where the ac- 
counts of receipts and disbursements were 
kept; and the bank of England, where 
after 1694 the money was actually deposited. 
Under the treasury were many lesser boards 
and officials — the commissioners of cus- 
toms, the victualling board, the auditor 
general of plantation revenues, the register 
of emigrants to the plantations, the general 
post-office, and occasionally temporary com- 



132 THE COLONIAL PERIOD , 

missions such as those that inquired into the 
claims of American LoyaHsts and of East 
Florida settlers after 1783. Much time has 
been devoted to the study of colonial finance, 
but almost no attention whatever has been 
paid to the methods of financial control 
adopted by the British Treasury in dealing 
with royal revenues and expenditures in the 
colonies. Yet these revenues were neither 
uninteresting nor unimportant. 

In close connection with the Treasury, 
though in no sense dependent upon it, was 
that "subordinate but opulent office," as 
Lord Rosebery calls it, the office of the pay- 
master general of the forces, the incumbent 
oif which was of ministerial rank and politi- 
cal importance and possessed of opportuni- 
ties, in that corrupt century, of acquiring 
private wealth at the expense of the state. 
Prominent men held this office and profited 
by it, though William Pitt passed through 
his tenure of it unscathed. Under the pay- 
master were the deputy paymasters in 
America and elsewhere, through whom the 
troops were paid, works and fortifications 
erected, and ordinary and extraordinary 
expenses met. 

The second of the great departments was 
the Admiralty, the beginnings of which, as 



IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION 133 

an efficient working body, date from the 
reorganization brought about by two men 
better known in other connections, James, 
Duke of York, and Samuel Pepys, respectively 
lord high admiral and secretary first of the 
navy board and afterward of the higher 
admiralty board. The admiralty system 
after 1709 consisted of an admiralty board, 
a treasurer, a navy board, a victualling board, 
a marine office, a board of sick and wounded, 
a transport board, and Greenwich hospital, 
formed from the palace of Greenwich, which 
William III gave to the nation in 1694. 
Tlie Admiralty had oversight of the great 
squadrons of the fleet, and busied itself with 
convoys and transports, imprests and em- 
bargoes, pirates, privateering, passes, and 
the enforcement of the trade laws. It plays 
little part in colonial history before 1676 
and its share in protecting colonial trade 
does not become conspicuous till after 1690, 
though even at the height of its activity the 
demands of colonial trade were always 
deemed secondary to the demands of the 
navy as an instrument of war. 

The last of the departments, though never 
a separate executive organ and assuming no 
responsibilities even within the limited scope 
of its activities, was the War Office under a 



134 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

secretary at war. This official traced his 
origin to the period of the Interregnum, but 
he was continued under Charles II as a 
secretary to the general of the forces. He 
was of comparatively little importance before 
1689, for there was no standing army; but 
after that date, when a standing army was 
created annually by the Mutiny Bill, he con- 
tinued to increase in dignity and power. 
After the middle of the eighteenth century 
he was able to build up a strong departmental 
system which performed the routine work 
connected with the army according to the 
discipline of war. This department had 
nothing to do with the militia, the guards, 
or with ordnance, transport, and supply, 
and before 1756 it plays little or no part in 
colonial history. But after that date it 
stands as equally important with the depart- 
ments of the Admiralty and the Treasury, 
except that it had no share in shaping the 
policy of a campaign. Secretaries of state, 
such as Pitt, controlled entirely matters of 
war policy. As a member of the House of 
Commons the secretary at war had to move 
the army estimates in parliament, and with 
the aid of the judge advocate general to 
meet every attack upon the commander-in- 
chief or his office. He was constantly in 



IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION 135 

correspondence with officials in America 
and had charge of the welfare of the army 
there. He was in close touch with the de- 
partment of ordnance, a separate office 
under the master general and board of 
ordnance, which controlled the artillery and 
engineer corps, the equipment of barracks, 
fortifications and works, and with the 
commissary general who looked after the 
supplies. 

Last of all, we come to that very important 
though subordinate body, familiar to all 
students of colonial history, the Board of 
Trade and Plantations established in 1696. 
It was the direct successor of the councils 
and committees of the seventeenth century 
and the faithful preserver of their policy. 
The field of its activities was somewhat 
more limited than that of the former coun- 
cils, but within its narrower range it found 
more to do owing to the great expansion of 
trade during the years that had elapsed 
since 1696. In its hands lay the chief busi- 
ness of communicating with the colonies, 
and from its papers Privy Council, parlia- 
ment, and departments obtained the infor- 
mation that guided their action. But it had 
no power of its own to carry out a policy, 
being entirely dependent on ministerial sup- 



136 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

port for the maintenance of its program. 
The carefully formulated plans of the board 
might be overturned at any time by an 
adverse vote in parliament or by an adverse 
decision of the committee of the Privy Coun- 
cil, to which all its regular reports and repre- 
sentations were made. 

The Board of Trade was the only important 
body in the British system of government 
that had no executive powers of its own. It 
could always inquire and inform itself, it 
could make any number of recommendations 
and suggestions, its advice was sought and 
generally adopted, and at times it had a 
considerable right of patronage; but it did 
not have what was of fundamental impor- 
tance, the power to form a clear-cut and effec- 
tive program with the certainty that it 
would be carried out. The board lasted for 
eighty -seven years; it developed fairly defi- 
nite ideas as to what the British policy 
toward the colonies should be; it maintained 
in the Plantation OflSce a permanent staff 
of secretaries and clerks who became the 
guardians of the traditions of the office; and 
upheld, during periods of political manipu- 
lation and frequent change, a more or less 
fixed colonial program. It was, indeed, often 
slow and indecisive in its action and as 



IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION) (137 

William Knox, who knew the office well, 
once said, "countenance was necessary for 
getting business done," but it was hampered, 
checked, and thwarted at many stages of 
its career by other governmental bodies 
that alone were responsible for the ultimate 
decision of the British government in matters 
relating to the colonies. The Privy Council 
could and did reverse its decisions, the secre- 
tary of state could and did draw away its 
business and its patronage and reduce it to 
a more or less inferior bureau of information, 
the houses of parliament could and did pass 
laws that the board did not recommend, 
and refuse to pass laws that the board desired 
as deserving of support in the interest of the 
kingdom. The departments of the Treasury 
and the Admiralty took no orders from the 
board and while frequently cooperating with 
it, when such cooperation was necessary 
and desirable, took their own time about 
doing so, and sometimes ignored the sug- 
gestions of the board altogether. 

These were the principal organs of the 
British administration with which the colo- 
nies came into contact and through which 
the British government exercised its control. 
The machinery was the same machinery that 
England would have had if the colonies had 



138 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

not been in existence. All the bodies and 
officials mentioned had the regular business 
of the kingdom to look after and all, except 
perhaps the Board of Trade, had to turn 
aside to deal with the colonies as but a 
minor and comparatively unimportant part 
of their regular duties. With characteristic 
devotion to practices of the past, the govern- 
ment never recognized the necessity of a 
colonial office. It placed the general over- 
sight of twenty important colonies in the 
hands of a body of men who considered a 
vast deal of business that was not colonial, 
from the running of wool to quarantine 
regulations and the prevention of contagion 
and epidemics; who sometimes sat for days 
debating the instructions to a foreign envoy 
or the terms of a trade treaty; who were in 
correspondence with consuls, envoys, agents, 
and scores of other persons who had nothing 
to do with the colonies, and who spent as 
much time on matters connected with the 
trade of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and 
of Hamburg, Sweden, France, Russia, Portu- 
gal, the Mediterranean, and Africa and the 
African Company as they did on affairs in 
America and the West Indies. Is it surprising 
that a board should have proved ineffective 
that had no power of its own to execute a 



IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION 139 

definite policy, which was distracted by a 
hundred questions that in no way concerned 
the colonies, whose chief interest in America, 
as in other parts of the empire, was the 
encouragement and extension of trade, and 
whose attention was directed far more to- 
ward the West Indies than to the colonies 
on the mainland, with whose growth and 
aspirations the board had but slight acquaint- 
ance? 

Furthermore, the real reponsibility for 
a colonial policy lay, as we have already seen, 
with offices of government that dealt with 
colonial affairs only as incidental to their 
regular duties. The secretary of state for 
the southern department, for example, had 
under his charge, not only the colonies, but 
the whole of southern Europe including 
Turkey, as well as Africa and the islands off 
the African coast, Scotland and Ireland, war, 
and domestic concerns. It is true that some 
of this business rested very lightly on his 
shoulders and that other officials took many 
of his responsibilities upon themselves; but 
it is also true that did the secretary desire 
to interfere in any of these concerns, he could 
be very mischievous in doing so and could 
hamper other subordinate officials as he did 
the Board of Trade, by controlling their 



140 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

actions and by taking out of their hands 
much that might better have been left alone. 
In the case of all the departments no attempt 
was made until late in their history to keep 
colonial entries and accounts separate from 
the records for the United Kingdom, and 
all are mingled together in a fashion that is 
not only embarrassing to the modern student 
but must have been equally embarrassing 
to the officials themselves in their search 
for information. Until 1767 even the statis- 
tics regarding colonial customs and the lists 
of colonial customs officials were scattered 
among the papers and rolls that relate to 
England itself. 

Consideration must also be given to two or 
three aspects of the situation in England that 
had an undoubted influence upon the British 
system of administration. First, the many 
offices of administration were not centralized, 
but were widely scattered, the heads in 
Whitehall and the subordinate branches 
two miles away in the City and about the 
Tower. There were fifteen different offices 
connected with the Admiralty, no two of 
which were under the same roof, and there 
were a dozen divisions that had to do with 
the business of war, of which only three or 
four were in the same place. Secondly, a 






IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION 141 

low order of efficiency and sense of duty 
prevailed among the officials in the higher 
ranks, resulting in great hindering of busi- 
ness and negligence in the execution of orders 
and instructions. Thirdly, a loose and demor- 
alizing financial system, whereby graft and 
peculation went on among the higher offi- 
cials, and poverty and want prevailed among 
the office clerks, postmen, messengers, and 
wage earners, whose pay was frequently 
in arrears. Lastly, politics tended to inter- 
fere with appointments and removals, and 
personal motives and personal ambitions 
influenced the selection of officials both in 
England and America. How far this situa- 
tion operated disadvantageously it is diffi- 
cult to say. Despite the frequent changes 
that were made in the personnel of the Board 
of Trade and despite the inferior abilities 
and low aims of many of the commissioners, 
the board had a consistent policy that de- 
serves our respect, and much might have 
been accomplished had it received adequate 
support from those who had the ultimate 
responsibility in their hands. 

Nevertheless British rule in America was 
no dead letter. The extent of royal author- 
ity exercised and obeyed in the colonies 
was very great. During the seventeenth 



142 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

century royal control was potential rather 
than active. There were the officials in the 
royal colonies; there were also a few collec- 
tors and naval officers; three or four tempo- 
rary commissions were sent over in special 
emergencies to remedy certain grievances 
and abuses, but beyond attempting the 
immediate work before them these commis- 
sions did very little; -a few soldiers were 
sent to Jamaica, Virginia, and New York, 
but they played an insignificant part there; a 
few ships of the royal navy were despatched 
to American waters, but the navy even in 
English history had not become a conspicu- 
ous factor. Except for one great attempt to 
unite all the northern colonies in a single 
dominion under a single governor, Andros, 
no systematic effort was made to strengthen 
British control of the colonies or to introduce 
a body of officials whose immediate end and 
aim was to serve the crown in England. 

But with the eighteenth century we feel a 
tightening of the bonds. More colonies 
came directly under the control of the king 
and received royal appointees. A famous 
effort was made to bring all the proprietary, 
and corporate governments into direct depend- 
ence on the crown which lasted from 1701 to 
1716 and was not entirely given up till the 



IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION 143 

middle of the century. This effort, one of the 
most significant and yet one of the least 
understood of all England's attempts to 
regulate the colonies, was vigorously pro- 
moted by the Board of Trade, was taken up 
with ecclesiastical ardor by the Anglican 
church and the Society for the Propagation 
of the Gospel, and was supported by all the 
Anglican churchmen in the colonies, who 
wished to overthrow the power of the Puri- 
tans in New England and the Quakers in 
Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The effort 
had the support of Queen Anne and the 
Tory party in England who upheld the 
established church. But the Whigs, in full 
control of government after 1714, opposed 
the bill, four times presented (1701, 1706, 
1715, 1722), because they believed in Locke's 
doctrine of vested property rights and 
deemed it unjust to deprive corporation or 
proprietor of franchises legally granted. 
They succeeded in postponing or defeating 
the measure each time it was presented, 
although in 1706 it passed the House of 
Commons only to suffer defeat in the House 
of Lords. The board consistently adhered 
to its policy for nearly thirty years longer 
and in 1731 and 1745 rumors came to Connec- 
ticut that plans were on foot to deprive the 



144 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

colony of its charter and to unite it and 
Rhode Island to Massachusetts. But the 
plan if seriously considered was never car- 
ried out and the non-royal colonies remained 
intact to the end of the colonial period. 

In other respects the bonds with England 
were drawn more firmly. Colonial laws, 
which in the royal colonies from the first 
(1629 in Virginia) had been subject to the 
ratification of the crown, were now sent 
regularly, not only from the royal colonies, 
but from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania 
also. The only colonies that were not re- 
quired to send their laws to England were 
Maryland, Connecticut, and Rhode Island; 
but Maryland, while a royal colony, had many 
of its laws disallowed, and later under the 
proprietary, particularly after 1756, contem- 
plated the submission of its laws to the board; 
Connecticut was instructed to send its laws 
in 1698 and did so; it had one law annulled 
in 1705, another in 1728, and all its laws 
reviewed in the years from 1733 to 1741; 
Rhode Island in 1699 sent over an abstract 
of its laws and in 1704 had the act relating 
to admiralty jurisdiction declared null and 
void although the colony had never sent 
over the act itself for royal inspection. 
While colonial legislation was thus under- 



IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION 145 

going rigorous scrutiny the instructions to 
the royal governors became more full and 
precise, until after 1750 they were made 
very positive and mandatory. Great num- 
bers of special instructions were drafted 
and despatched and these instructions cov- 
ered a wide range of colonial interests. 

In addition to the governors nearly all 
the officials in the royal colonies were ap- 
pointed either from England or by royal 
officials in America. Treasurers were some- 
times named by the governor, sometimes 
chosen by the assemblies, and constables 
and overseers, where they existed, were 
sometimes appointed and sometimes elected. 
Secretaries, attorneys general, and chief 
justices were appointed by the crown and 
the number of customs officials, beginning 
with four in 1676, steadily increased until 
it reached forty. Customs officers were to 
be found in every colony from Nova Scotia 
to Barbadoes, and they collected for the 
British exchequer the duties levied by the 
act of 1672. Deputy auditors and receivers 
general looked after quit-rents, forfeitures, 
fines, prize money, and various licenses. 
Very important were the courts of vice 
admiralty, set up after 1700 to try breaches 
of the acts of trade; special courts appointed 



146 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

for the trial of pirates; and the commis- 
sions to decide boundary cases and to take 
charge of prizes captured in war. Important 
also was the steady increase of British 
garrisons stationed in Newfoundland, Nova 
Scotia, New York, South Carohna, and 
especially in Bermuda, Jamaica, and the 
Leeward Islands, and the extension of 
fortifications, barracks, and other works, 
and the supplies of arms, ammunition, and 
other munitions of war despatched by the 
ordnance board for the defense of the colo- 
nies. The long war from 1697 to 1715 brought 
conspicuously forward the need of protec- 
tion against the French, and to certain 
colonial governors — Fletcher, Bellomont, 
Phips, and others — were granted military 
commissions over two or more colonies that 
gave great offense because they seemed to 
foreshadow a more complete military con- 
trol. With the years from 1745 to 1763 
this question of defense became a pressing 
one and British military interests in America 
became correspondingly prominent. 

When brought together in two or three 
paragraphs, and what has been said here 
enumerates but in briefest outline the actual 
British ofiicials and interests in America, it 
would seem as if British authority should 



IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION 147 

have been amply upheld in the colonies and 
that all tendencies toward colonial independ- 
ence should have been checked at the out- 
set. But before going further we must take 
two or three things into consideration. 

The system of administration in England 
was not well adapted for the government of 
distant plantations. Authority was decen- 
tralized and business was executed in a 
manner that was slow and cumbersome. 
Recommendations lay in the hands of a 
great variety of departments, while ulti- 
mate execution lay in the hands of crown and 
council or parliament. Months would elapse 
before a recommendation would be acted 
upon and sometimes it would not be acted 
on at all. Among the various offices, as far 
as colonial business went, there seemed to be 
little feeling of cooperation and responsibility. 
The Admiralty and Navy Board were fre- 
quently on unfriendly terms, and the Ord- 
nance department resented the efforts of 
the secretary at war to assert authority over 
it. The Board of Trade, that knew the situ- 
ation in America best, was helpless when it 
came to executive action. Could its reports 
have had the authority of commands, its 
dignity would have been increased and its 
position greatly strengthened. But it was 



148 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

never looked up to as a responsible body, 
the home government never deemed it much 
more than advisory in character, and the 
colonial governors never felt any certainty 
that they would be sustained if they at- 
tempted to carry out rigorously th^ instruc- 
tions sent to them. What the government 
should have had, if the colonial policy of 
England were to be executed with firmness 
and despatch, was a consistent, vigorous, and 
well-defined method of colonial control, 
in the hands of a board possessed of execu- 
tive powers, and based on an intelligent 
understanding of the situation in America. 
Very few of the British officials had either 
knowledge or understanding of America. 
Their failure was not always due to inability 
to obtain information, for the board could 
generally give them the information that was 
necessary, but they seemed powerless to 
comprehend the seriousness of the situation 
or to meet it when they saw the danger. Of 
all offenders in this respect the British parlia- 
ment was most conspicuous. In thwarting 
the well-laid plans of the Board of Trade and 
in pursuing an opportunist and conflicting 
policy, parliament did more than any other 
part of the British system to prepare the 
way for the eventual revolt of the colonies. 



IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION 149 

Parliament never understood the aims and 
tendencies of the people in America. The 
laws that it passed, like all the statutes 
of the eighteenth century, were designed to 
meet particular needs and not based on any 
broad and general principles. Hence it was 
inevitable that in nearly every respect 
parliamentary legislation should be fitful 
and inconsistent in character. 

Had appointments to office been better 
managed and sinecures, pluralities, and ser- 
vice by deputy been strictly forbidden, and 
had colonial finance been capable of any 
sort of satisfactory solution, the badly con- 
structed system of administration in England 
might not have proved so inadequate to 
meet the demands in America. But unfor- 
tunately colonial management in the eight- 
eenth century fell on an evil time. Polit- 
ical morahty was at a low ebb and bribery 
and corruption and harmful official prac- 
tices were not only tolerated but defended. 
The methods adopted in dispensing public 
patronage in England spread to the colonies; 
civil service reform was unknown, except 
perhaps in the lower staff offices. The fact 
that the Board of Trade could not appoint 
colonial officials threw the assignment of im- 
portant posts into the hands of those who 



150 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

could exercise political influence. All the 
important colonial ofSces in the royal colonies 
were held directly or indirectly of the crown. 
Walpole and Newcastle had their regular lists 
of appointees; the bishop of London was in- 
fluential in securing political preferment for 
those whom he deemed useful allies of the 
Anglican church; many private individuals 
were able to secure positions for those whom 
they favored, with the result that public oflSce 
in the colonies was open to men of low stand- 
ards to whom the political atmosphere was 
eminently congenial. The situation was made 
worse by the practice of granting colonial 
positions to men already holding office in 
England who farmed out their patents to the 
highest bidder, with the inevitable result 
that the latter tried to benefit themselves 
by using their opportunity for private gain, 
a practice oflacially allowed. 

The situation was still further compli- 
cated by the inability of the government to 
create a satisfactory system of payment 
for the royal officials in America, either 
out of the British exchequer directly or by 
obtaining from the colonies a regular appro- 
priation for a civil list which would render 
the colonial governors independent of the 
colonial assemblies. The fact that many of 



IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION 151 

the officials were dependent on fees for their 
support brought into exaggerated prominence 
the money side of their business and led to 
what often appears as an over-zealous regard 
for such features of their offices as brought in 
financial returns. When we consider these 
and other aspects of the British system we 
can wonder, not that so many incompetent 
men came to America, but that so many men 
of excellent purpose and high aims could 
be found to undertake the undesirable and 
profitless task of serving the crown in the 
colonies. General Carleton summed up the 
position of the governors admirably when he 
wrote, "It may not be improper here to 
observe that the British form of government 
transplanted into this continent never will 
produce the same fruits as at home, chiefly 
because it is impossible for the dignity of 
the throne or peerage to be represented in 
the American forests. Beside, the governor 
having little or nothing to give away can 
have but Httle influence; in place of that it 
is his duty to retain all in proper subordina- 
tion and to restrain those officers who live 
by fees from running them up to extortion; 
these gentlemen, put into offices that require 
integrity, knowledge, and abilities, because 
they bid the highest rent to the patentees. 



152 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

finding themselves checked in their views 
of profit and disposed to look on the person 
who disappoints them as their enemy, and 
without going so far as to forfeit their em- 
ployment, they in general will be shy of grant- 
ing that assistance the king's service may 
require, unless they are all equally discon- 
tented or equally corrupt." 

To the conditions above noted we must 
add the difficulties of communicating with 
dependencies three thousand miles away. 
Though packet boats were plying between 
England and the West Indies as early as 
1704, and Blathwayt, the auditor general, 
urged the extension of the system to the 
American continent, particularly to Mary- 
land and Virginia, "the most profitable 
colonies of any others," the main dependence, 
until 1755, was the merchant ship whose 
captain received the packets and boxes of 
papers and delivered them at the port for 
which he was destined. Such an irregular 
system meant endless delay and not infre- 
quent loss. Despatches from England must 
have had strange adventures. Captains 
sometimes carried them on long journeys, 
handed them on from one boat to another, 
dropped them in the custom house where 
they waited a long time before delivery, or 



IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION 153 

dropped them overboard if there was any 
danger of capture. The rephes underwent 
the same experiences, having to cope with a 
very slow, irresponsible, and expensive pos- 
tal service, so that communication at both 
ends was frequently so long delayed that 
information was received too late for action. 
The period of despatch and answer was 
never less than three months, and thus the • 
game of colonial management was generally | 
played in the dark. Governors wrote their ' * 
letters hastily, with but little chance of 
revision, postscripts were sometimes added 
while the ship was waiting, and other con- 
ditions prevailed not conducive to thought- 
ful and well-considered replies. The board 
was at times very dilatory in answering 
important letters, on one occasion allowing 
nearly three years to elapse before taking 
up the accumulated mass of colonial corre- 
spondence. 

As far as can be determined at the present 
stage of investigation, the British system 
of colonial control was both inadequate and 
ineffective, and it would have remained in- , 
adequate and to a degree ineffective even 
if it had been honorably, consistently, and 
intelligently conducted, because at best it 
was not designed to do the work that needed j 



154 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

to be done. The British government made 
use of old machinery, constructed for a 
different purpose, to meet a situation that 
it only partly understood. The system was 
planned for no higher purpose than the 
furtherance of trade and commerce, it was 
quite incompetent to hold in control a grow- 
ing people capable of independent life and 
restless under the bonds of a colonial policy 
that checked at critical points their freedom 
of action. 



CHAPTER VII 

COLONIAL STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL 

Having considered briefly the system of 
administration in England we must turn our 
attention to the colonies themselves, in order 
to ascertain the position which they occupied 
in the eighteenth century, their relation with 
the government across the sea, and the influ- 
ences which were at work creating among 
them a feeling and spirit of independence. 
Independence and separation from Great 
Britain were not achieved at a single stroke 
by war or otherwise, and the events of the 
years from 1763 to 1775 were but an outward 
manifestation of conviction and strength 
already attained during a century and a half 
of experience and endeavor. 

At the outset distinctions appear between 
the mother country and the colonies that are 
characteristic of an old and a new society. 
England was a land of fixed traditions, the 
English people, conservative by nature, 
were peculiarly conservative during that stiff- 
necked eighteenth century, when institutions 
and political opinions were settling into an 
unyielding mould that was to resist all at- 

155 



156 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

tempts at reform for a century and a quarter. 
If statesmen could not understand the needs 
of the people in England, where aristocratic 
and proprietary notions thwarted every at- 
tempt to remodel the existing social and polit- 
ical systems, how could they understand the 
needs of the people of the great frontier of 
the west, where men and women were living 
lives freed from tradition and convention, 
in close touch with the physical world around 
them. Except in some of the tide-water 
regions of the south, the social and political 
atmosphere of America was essentially un- 
like that of the mother country. In such an 
atmosphere prerogative would find little sym- 
pathy, feudal ideas little permanence, and the 
employment of a colony's resources in behalf of 
absentee landlords and appointees was bound 
to meet with opposition and eventual defeat. 
At the end of the seventeenth century 
there were more than two hundred and fifty 
thousand white people along the colonial 
seaboard. Sixty years later the number had 
increased to more than a million and a half. 
Virginia with sixty thousand was followed 
by Massachusetts, Maryland, and Connecti- 1 
cut in the order named, while Philadelphia, 
the largest city, had twelve thousand, and 
Boston, New York, and Newport, seven, five, , , 

i 



STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL 157 

and two and a half thousand respectively. 
The era of settlement was over and that of 
established government had begun. The 
colonies were no longer struggling plan- 
tations. In the issues of settlement they 
had solved the question of their own per- 
manence, and in the dramatic scenes which 
had accompanied the insurrections of 1676 
and 1689 they had expressed in no uncer- 
tain tones their dislike of autocratic rule. 
The Bacon revolt in Virginia in 1676 had been 
a protest of the new plantations to the west 
against the selfish and domineering rule of 
Berkeley and the older counties. The over- 
throw of Andros in New England had been 
provoked by the annulment of the Massachu- 
setts charter and the abolition of represen- 
tative government. The Leisler usurpation 
in New York had found its leading justi- 
fication in the refusal of James II to recog- 
nize democratic institutions in that province. 
The uprising in Maryland had been directed 
against the selfish and oligarchic rule of the 
proprietary, in the interest, as the people 
supposed, of a Roman Catholic control of gov- 
ernment. From all these conflicts the colonists 
emerged strengthened in their loyalty to popu- 
lar rule, and more assertive than ever of what 
they declared to be their rights as Englishmen. 



158 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

With the grant of representative govern- 
ment in New York, the series of popular 
assembhes in the colonies was complete. 
Though the electoral franchise varied widely, 
in general it may be said that the voter had 
to be a white man, twenty-one years of age, 
and possessed of property. Religious quali- 
fications existed in Barbadoes, Rhode Island 
(1719), and South Carolina, where the voter 
had to be a Christian, in Virginia, where 
atheists were denied the right to vote, and 
in Maryland, where Roman Catholics were 
disfranchised (1718). The unit of represen- 
tation was the town, county, parish, or pre- 
cinct. The assembly was the mouthpiece of 
the colony and derived its authority from the 
people; the governor and council were the 
representatives of the crown and the prerog- 
ative in the royal colonies and derived their 
authority from England. Governor, council, 
and representatives formed the general as- 
sembly, a term that in some instances the 
popular body assumed to itself, and as time 
went on the lower house steadily extended 
its pretensions to all the privileges and pow- 
ers of the House of Commons in England, 
a claim that the English authorities vehe- 
mently denied as illegal and unwarranted. 
Nowhere in the eighteenth century, in either 



I 



STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL 159 

royal or proprietary colony, were the people 
despotically governed; and no statesman or 
department in England had any serious 
intention of meddling with the political in- 
tegrity of the colonies or of denying the 
right of the people to have a share in govern- 
ment. England's colonial policy was never 
designed to prevent the exercise of a reason- 
able amount of political autonomy, though 
to the Englishman of that day unalloyed de- 
mocracy was neither necessary nor desirable. 
The British government encouraged the 
self-reliance of the colonies because it 
wished to relieve the exchequer of heavy 
appropriations for colonial maintenance and 
protection. It refused to make permanent 
provision for defense, because it counted on 
such increase of population as would enable 
the colonists to defend themselves; while 
on the side of maintenance it is noteworthy 
that with the exception of Nova Scotia, 
Georgia after 1752, and the Floridas after 
1763, no parliamentary grant was ever made 
for colonial administration in America. Great 
Britain expected every colony to stand on its 
pwn feet. Colonial territory was never incor- 
porated as a part of the British kingdom, 
md the colonists were never brought under 
ihe administrative regulations laid down for 



160 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

the government of the realm. Inevitably, 
therefore, they tended to lose more or less 
their identity as Englishmen and to become 
primarily attached to their local communi- 
tiei7as New Englanders, Pennsylvanians, 
Virginians, Barbadians, and the like, a result 
more conspicuous in the continental than in 
the West Indian colonies. Even as early as 
1660, Massachusetts had deemed allegiance to 
the colony of greater moment than allegiance 
to the crown, and doubtless more than one 
colonist elsewhere rated at less than its face 
value an allegiance that was forced upon 
them in compulsory oaths at the time of 
departure. This tendency toward separate- 
ness was emphasized by the presence of thou- 
sands of foreigners, who owed no allegiance 
to the British government and to whom the 
colony of their residence was their patria. 

Englishmen never made any serious at- 
tempt to sound the depths of such senti- 
ment, though the secretary of state and the 
Board of Trade were well aware of its exist- 
ence, labelling it disaffection and ingrati- 
tude. Whenever a movement more than 
usually troublesome took place, whether in 
the assemblies of Massachusetts or New York, \ 
or in the towns of New Jersey, the Enghshj 
officials interpreted it as an effort on the parti 



STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL 161 

of the colonists to rid themselves of depend- 
ency on Great Britain. "There is too much 
reason," wrote Newcastle to Burnet, "to 
think that the main drift of the assembly 
in refusing to comply is to throw off the de- 
pendence on the crown, which proceeding 
can in no wise be justified by their charter 
and never will be allowed by His Majesty"; 
and of the New Jersey riots of 1748-1749 
the Privy Council said, "As the infection is 
daily spreading it will probably soon over- 
spread the whole province of New Jersey 
and get into the two neighboring provinces 
of New York and Pennsylvania, and may 
in its consequence greatly affect the depend- 
ence of the plantations on the crown of Great 
Britain, if timely measures are not taken to 
stop it." Nothing more was intended by these 
remarks than that the colonists were restive 
under the restraints of the British system. 
Independence in the sense of separation was 
not seriously thought of either in England or 
America until after 1763. 

The colonies were growing with remark- 
able rapidity. Eastwardly their ships were 
trading, not only with England and the West 
Indies, but with the cities of the North Sea, 
the Baltic, and the Mediterranean, with the 
coast of Guinea, and later with some parts of 



162 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

the East Indies. Westwardly, the migrating 
New Englander, German, and Scots-Irish 
were filKng the upland and back-country, 
and planters from the tidewater were stak- 
ing land claims in the mountain valleys of 
Virginia and the Carolinas. In New York 
and New England frontier posts were spring- 
ing up along the Mohawk, in the Berkshires, 
and upon the upper waters of the Connec- 
ticut, the latter of which were developing 
into towns of the old New Ejigland type, 
where the old standards of morality and 
education continued to prevail . As contrasted 
with the island colonies, where expansion was 
impossible, the settlements on the continent 
increased in number with each decade, en- 
larging the area of their trade and cultivation, 
presenting new and weighty problems for 
solution, and creating conditions favorable to 
individualism and the spirit of self-support. 
A new generation was arising that knew 
little of British government and policy, 
and whose horizon was bounded by the older, 
settled area that represented to them the 
region of privilege and fixed traditions. 
A more primitive but more democratic and 
independent society was gradually emerging, 
the peculiarities of which were American 
rather than English, and out of the conflicts 



STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL 163 

that followed with the older settlers and Eng- 
land an American nationality was born. 

Legally and in practice all the colonies were 
dependent on the crown of England. Such 
dependence it was the object of British states- 
men to maintain, for in their estimation and 
in the estimation of the mercantile classes 
such dependence was essential to the preser- 
vation of British prosperity. Lord Mans- 
field struck at the root of the trouble in 1765, 
when he said in the debate on the repeal of 
the Stamp Act, "The Americans may think 
they have a right to an open trade and es- 
tablishment of manufactures. What then 
would become of us .'^ " 

In actual operation dependence involved 
definite limitations upon the self-government 
and economic freedom of the colonies. By 
the imposition of certain feudal obligations, 
the greater number of the colonists were 
not full owners of the lands they occupied. 
By the right of king or proprietor to control 
the executive and judicial branches of their 
government, to instruct the governors, repeal 
legislation, and admit appeals and com- 
plaints from colonial courts, the colonists 
were subject to control and interference on 
the part of the sovereign power beyond the 
seas. By the asserted right of parliament to 



164 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

legislate regarding trade, and to compel the 
colonists by statute to conform to England's 
declared policy of using the colonies as 
sources of supply for the mother country, 
they were deprived of the full use of their 
own resources and compelled to adapt them- 
selves to England's industrial and economic 
needs. Every act or practice that represented 
interference on the part of king or proprietors 
in the affairs of the colonists and served as a 
check upon entire freedom of life and govern- 
ment can be brought under one or the other 
of these heads. The movement toward inde- 
pendence consisted in the throwing off of these 
restraints as far as it was possible to do so. 

> During the colonial era all the middle and 
southern colonies were feudal territories, the 
lands of which were owned by an outside 
lord, king or proprietor. Such title to the 
soil carried with it certain feudal incidents, 
well known to English land law and practice, 
that represented the relationship between a 
lord and his tenants. There were so-called 
manors in New York, New Jersey, and Penn- 
sylvania, actual manors in Maryland, baron- 
ies in South Carolina, and traces of such in- 
cidents as view of frankpledge, forfeiture, 
and escheat, in many of the colonies. The 
law of descent in Virginia was by prime- 



STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL 165 

^eniture, the succession of the eldest son, 
various feudal forms of land conveyancing 
prevailed, and many courts baron and leet 
must have been held in Maryland, though 
the record of but one has come down to us. 
But most of these survivals are negligible 
factors in colonial life. 

One practice, however, the payment of 
quit-rents, did not die. It remained to be- 
come a source of trouble in every con- 
tinental colony from New York to Georgia. 
Land in these colonies was not held in full 
ownership, as it was in New England and Ber- 
muda. Each colonist, who was a freeholder, 
was a tenant, paying to king or proprietor a 
small sum in recognition of the higher own- 
ership and as quitting the land of all further 
obligations. The sum, thus called a quit-rent, 
was small, from one to four shillings a hun- 
dred acres, but the colonists never liked it and 
resisted the payment of it from the beginning. 

The collection of quit-rents was a perennial 
source of trouble. The payments were al- 
ways in arrears, and attempts to apply the 
feudal penalty of forfeiting the land were so 
obnoxious to the colonists and so manifest a 
retarding of settlement that forfeiture was 
forbidden by law in Virginia and rarely 
enforced elsewhere. Distraint at common law 



166 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

was the customary form of legal procedure, 
involving the seizure of some of the colonist's 
property for the non-payment of rent. Of 
all the colonies New Jersey was the most 
obstinate, and in the middle of the eighteenth 
century the inhabitants there engaged in 
riots of a threatening character, when efforts 
were made to enforce payment. Maryland 
was the most tractable colony, paying the 
rents without marked dissatisfaction to the 
extent of some £8000 a year. The other 
colonies contributed much less. Virginia, 
South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and North 
Carohna paying from £3000 to £1000, with 
New York and Georgia furnishing but small 
amounts, and New Jersey paying practically 
nothing. In some colonies the question was 
fought out in the assembly, in others in the 
courts, in northern New Jersey in the streets. 
In New Jersey and Pennsylvania refusal was 
based on a denial of the right to collect; in 
Maryland and the south on a feeling that a 
feudal tenure was out of place in a frontier 
country. The opposition was as strong in 
the royal colonies, Virginia, New York, and 
after 1730, the Carolinas, where the quit- 
rents were collected for the crown, and part 
of the money was spent on the colonies them- 
selves, as it was in the proprietary colonies. 



STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL 167 

Maryland and Pennsylvania, where the 
money went to the proprietors. By resist- 
ing the payment of quit-rents the colonists 
sought to transform their tenancies into free 
property; to retain all the resources of the 
colony for themselves and so to eliminate the 
absentee landlord; and, lastly, to prevent the 
crown from obtaining a permanent revenue 
from the land by means of which crown 
officials might have been freed from depend- 
ence on the representatives of the people for 
their pay. The whole quit-rent struggle is 
thus intimately bound up with the colonial 
movement toward i'ndependence. 

More significant even than the resistance 
to quit-rents was the long-drawn-out warfare 
which went on in every colony, except Con- 
necticut and Rhode Island, against the right 
of king or proprietor to control the govern- 
ment through their appointees, the govern- 
ors. King or proprietor appointed the gov- 
ernor, and in the case of the proprietor the 
crown confirmed the nomination under cer- 
tain conditions. The governor's powers, 
which were very extensive, were granted, 
in a general way, by means of a public 
commission issued under the great seal, and 
more in detail by elaborate instructions, not 
intended for publication, sent privately and 



168 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

often secretly under the king's sign-manuaL 
Additional and special instructions were 
issued from time to time. In scope the gov- 
ernor's powers, as defined in these important 
documents, were co-extensive with those of 
the crown itself, being in some particulars 
even greater, as in the case of the veto on 
legislation, which no British sovereign exer- 
cised after 1707. 

With the growth of the popular assembly 
after 1690, the struggle took the form of a 
contest between the royal prerogative, repre- 
sented by the governor and the council 
on one side, and the representatives of the 
people on the other, and thus resembled the 
corresponding conflict in England at the same 
time. The king was exercising an authority 
that he had a legal and historical right 
to exercise, while the colonists, unimpressed 
by the legal and historical argument, were 
endeavoring to obtain, as far as they could, 
control of their own affairs. The position 
of the governors was far from easy. They 
faced a very determined body of representa- 
tives who made bold and persistent attempts 
to encroach upon their authority and to tear 
away from them some of their powers. Their 
position was often lamentably weak; they 
were frequently unsupported by the home 



STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL 169 

government and though they might count 
on the Board of Trade they could never be 
sure that the secretary of state would not 
intervene. Codrington once wrote, "I had 
much rather have a furlough than a new com- 
mission. My honor is much dearer to me 
than an employ more valuable than mine is 
and if an English gentleman is to be perjured, 
clamoured, and voted out of his reputation 
without being allowed a hearing a French- 
man or even a Turk has no reason to envy 
an Englishman, I act with as much cau- 
tion in everything I do as if I were walking 
between red hot irons, and act with the same 
sincerity as if I were to die to-morrow. The 
colonies abroad will be governed as they 
ought to be, when governors are made inde- 
pendent of their assemblies, and after that 
hanged up when they don't do their duty." 
The colonial governors were not as a rule 
great men, some of them being inefficient and 
incompetent, but the fault lay less with the 
men than with the system, which pro- 
vided for a form of government that never 
did work as it was intended to do. 

The most important illustration of this 
statement is the struggle for the control of 
the purse, the time-honored instrument 
used by the parliament of England to gain 



170 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

its ends. According to "ancient custom," 
the king controlled all the revenues of a 
royal colony. The assembly voted the 
money, which was placed in the hands of a 
treasurer or receiver general, who paid it 
out on the order of the governor. Books of 
accounts were to be kept and transmitted 
half-yearly to the Treasury in England, there 
to be examined and audited, that the king 
might be "satisfied of the right and due 
application of the revenue of the plantation." 
This method of procedure, which was re- 
stated very emphatically in special instruc- 
tions sent out in 1732, did not suit the as- 
semblies, which from the first disputed the 
right of the governor to control the expendi- 
ture. In Massachusetts, New York, New 
Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the Carolinas, 
the assembly asserted, and asserted success- 
fully, their power over the finances. In 
Georgia, which came late into the struggle, 
the conflict was fought out during the war 
with France. The home government trained 
by experience kept a firm grasp upon the 
colony, while the Georgian assembly, with the 
example of the other colonies before it, re- 
sorted even to force, its members, on one 
occasion, following the precedent of the 
English parHament of 1629, holding the 



STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL 171 

speaker in the chair, while business was 
transacted, and seizing the books of the 
clerk, that the record might be altered to 
suit their purposes. Even in Bermuda and 
Barbadoes the assemblies, though never 
asserting their claims in so high handed a 
manner as on the continent, had many con- 
flicts with the royal prerogative, some of 
which they won and others compromised. 

Equally important with the encroachment 
of the assemblies on the financial functions 
of the governors was their determined re-, 
fusal in nearly all the colonies to establish a 
permanent civil list, which the crown might 
"lise for the payment of the governors' salaries 
and for the defense of the colonies in time of 
war. Hard as the Board of Trade tried to 
obtain such a revenue and strenuously as 
the governors sought to force the assemblies 
to appropriate it, their efforts met with no 
success, except in Jamaica, where the assembly 
drove a hard bargain with the British au- 
thorities by compelling them to concede 
control over legislation for a grant of £8000 
a year. In the other colonies no such bargain 
was made, for the assemblies knew that a 
permanent civil list would render the governor 
independent of their control. By voting the 
governors' salaries year by year the assem- 



172 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

blies over and over again bent the governors 
to their own will and compelled them to 
yield even when the instructions of king or 
proprietor ordered them to do otherwise. 

The Board of Trade was fully aware of 
the difficulty and of the danger to the royal 
authority in the colonies. "It appeared," the 
board said in 1725, in its report on Shute's 
quarrel with the legislature of Massachusetts, 
"that the point contended for, was to bring 
the governor to a dependence on their good- 
will for his sustenance, which would mani- 
festly tend to the lessening of his authority 
and consequently of that dependence which 
this colony ought to have upon the crown 
of Great Britain, by bringing the whole legis- 
lative power into the hands of the people," 
and, believing that it was "absolutely neces- 
sary that the independency of the governor on 
the assembly be preserved," it made many 
efforts to persuade parliament to enforce its 
orders or to settle a fixed and permanent sal- 
ary out of the royal exchequer. But parlia- 
ment and the secretary of state refused to 
cooperate and consequently the Board of 
Trade was as helpless as the governors 
themselves. The colonial assemblies found 
their best ally in parliament, which post^ 
poned till the end of the colonial era a policy 



STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL 173 

of coercion, which had it been apphed at 
the beginning of the eighteenth century 
might have altered the course of our history. 
By 1750, in nearly all the colonies, the 
assembly had become the most influential 
factor in government. In New York, where 
the victory was first won, the overthrow of 
the royal prerogative was so complete that 
the Privy Council could say in 1754, "The 
assembly have taken to themselves not only 
the management and disposal of the public 
money, but have also wrested from your 
Majesty's governor the nomination of all / 
officers of government, the custody and ; 
direction of all military stores, the mustering/ 
and regulating of troops raised for your 
Majesty's service, and in short almost eyery^ 
other executive part of government.^ Never- 
theless the Board of Trade was still asserting 
that there was "nothing so necessary to the 
preservation of his Majesty's government in 
the colonies as the careful and strict mainte- 
nance of the just prerogative," and the Privy 
Council could deny with great emphasis 
in 1765 the contention of the assembly of 
Jamaica, that its privileges did not flow from 
the grace of the king but were rights inherent 
in themselves, and five years later could still 
affirm that the "House of Assembly [of St. 



174 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

Christopher] seems to have corrupted its own 
constitution by affecting a power which they 
have not, analogous and co-equal to that of 
the House of Commons of Great Britain." 

Despite the refusal of the home government 
to accept the inevitable, the fact remains that 
before 1760 the royal control in the colonies 
was largely destroyed. Colonial officials, 
though still appointed by royal warrant, were 
in a majority of cases dependent on the 
assemblies for their salaries and the amount 
of their fees. Only in Virginia, the Carolinas, 
Bermuda, and the Leeward Islands, where the 
governor and other officials were paid out of 
such royal revenues as the quit-rents, four 
and a half per cent duty, and certain export 
dues and licenses, was the independence of 
the governor in a measure attained. Though 
the crown was claiming the right to extend the 
privilege of representation to new towns and 
counties and so evidencing its distrust of 
the elective element in the colonies, nearly 
all the assemblies had taken that power to 
themselves, and continued to exercise it 
despite orders to the contrary in the gov- 
ernors' instructions. 

Thus colonial government was no longer in 
the hands of the royal officials; the authority 
of the royal and proprietary governors re- 



STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL 175 

laxed; they lost their patronage, their con- 
trol over the military, their ability to employ 
secret funds, to check riots and revolts, to 
manage a police or to take any adequate 
measures to ensure security at home, or to 
protect the frontiers against the French and 
Indians. The helplessness of the governors 
in military matters is strikingly illustrated 
during the French and Indian war when the 
assemblies of such colonies as Pennsylvania, 
Maryland, and North Carolina were so busy 
defending the constitutional powers they had 
won that they disgracefully neglected the 
common cause of defense against the enemy. 
As we have already seen in a previous 
chapter the colonies were subject to control 
at the hands of the crown in another impor- 
tant respect. The laws of nearly every colony 
were subject to the scrutiny of the higher 
authorities in England. If the king in council 
approved of the laws they were returned to 
the colony and became a permanent part of 
its legislation until their expiry or their 
repeal by the colonial legislature. This right 
of the king to disallow colonial legislation 
was a very real check upon self-government. 
A colonial law had to pass, not only the 
veto of the governor in the colony, but also 
the royal disallowance in England before it 



176 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

could take effect. The king himself, of course, 
had nothing to do with the matter. In most 
cases the Board of Trade settled it with the 
advice of its lawyers, and this power became 
a weapon of no little importance in the hands 
of the board. It is idle to say that the weapon 
was never wielded or was rendered useless 
by colonial strategy. During the period 
from 1675 to 1775 probably more than five 
hundred laws were disallowed for the con- 
tinental colonies alone, and never was a more 
rigid scrutiny exercised than after 1770, when 
"Omniscient" Jackson, a strict construc- 
tionist of unbending type, was the legal ad- 
viser of the board. 

How far such disallowance of colonial 
laws was reasonable or unreasonable cannot 
be discussed here. Acts were disallowed 
which were deemed prejudicial to the king's 
prerogative, to the property of his subjects, 
and to the trade and shipping of the king- 
dom, or were contrary to the law of England; 
others because they were badly drawn or had 
some verbal defect in the title or elsewhere. 
As a rule the law oflScers were very careful 
in their scrutiny, and though they objected 
to many laws that were hostile to British 
interests they frequently saved the colonies 
from much ill-advised and hasty legislation. 



STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL 177 

They rarely interfered to the manifest in- 
jury of the colonists and frequently recom- 
mended laws that were not in accord with a 
strict interpretation of English statutes. 
On one occasion a report read, "This is a 
very good act and seems better calculated 
to serve the end intended than all our 
statutes and amendments." There was 
always the chance of a further hearing before 
the Privy Council committee, if the colony 
so desired, though the procedure was slow, 
cumbersome, and vexatious. The Board of 
Trade sometimes reversed the opinion of its 
adviser, and the Privy Council, acting on the 
advice of the attorney general, sometimes 
reversed the opinion of the board. 

The exercise of the royal right of dis- 
allowance was very irritating to the colonists, 
not so much because it repealed legislation as 
because of the long delay which kept the 
colony in a constant state of uncertainty. 
A number of years might pass, particularly 
} in the royal colonies, before the royal decision 
I was known, and during that time the act. 
would be in operation with the people wholly 
'tff The dark as to its eventual fate. Some- 
times the colony passed temporary laws that 
were designed to operate but for a short time; 
sometimes they re-enacted the law under a 



178 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

slightly different form, but generally such 
re-enactments were merely attempts to meet 
the objections of the home authorities, and 
were not infrequently due to requests of the 
board that the law be passed again with the 
obnoxious clause left out. In a few cases the 
colonists paid no attention to the royal act of 
intervention, but such disobedience was rare. 
In general it will be found that the exercise 
of the right of disallowance was a salutary 
measure of control. But the fact that it 
was heartily disliked by the colonies who were 
unable successfully to evade it or to prevent 
it is in itself important. What troubled the 
colonists was that an authority outside of 
themselves could limit their power to legis- 
late in their own behalf, that is, could prevent 
them from doing what they pleased, whether 
for their own good or otherwise. 

The same restlessness under restraint is 
seen with equal distinctness in the royal 
right of hearing complaints and grievances 
from America and in receiving appeals from 
the colonial courts. Many of the colonies 
resisted strenuously this prerogative claim 
of the crown to be the court of last resort 
and the fountain of justice and equity, in 
matters colonial, and they employed their, 
agents in London actively in the business of 



STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL 179 

bringing these appeals to naught. Both 
Connecticut and Rhode Island denied with 
vehemence the right of the king to interfere, 
and perhaps in so doing served to strengthen 
the hands of their enemies, for in both colonies 
the right was exercised with very telling effect. 
Indeed, throughout the colonial period, the 
presentation of complaints and grievances 
was a common matter, while in the eighteenth 
century, particularly from 1760 to 1770, 
when the number of cases reached 134, 
appeals from the colonial courts were made 
with increasing frequency. In all these cases 
the Board of Trade, which considered these 
complaints and reported on appeals, when the 
question involved was one of fact and not of 
law, acted with exemplary fairness. The 
members took great pains to sift the complaint 
to the bottom and to render an impartial de- 
cision. The committee of the council, which 
alone considered questions involving legal 
procedure and interpretation, did likewise, 
but the difficulty of getting exact information 
was very great and in some cases, notably the 
annulling of the Connecticut Intestacy law, 
there can be no doubt that it acted unwisely. 
When we consider the distance from Amer- 
ica and the material upon which the board 
and the council committee and their advisers 



180 THE COLONIz\L PERIOD 

had to base their decisions, we may wonder, 
not that they made mistakes, but that they 
made serious mistakes so rarely. Their very 
desire to be just undoubtedly prolonged 
the hearings and increased the impatience 
of the colony for a verdict. The claim of Lord 
Fairfax to lands in Virginia was before the 
council for twelve years, the delays seemed 
interminable, while the expenses were corre- 
spondingly great. The Mac Sparran claim to 
lands in Rhode Island waited nearly sixteen 
years before it was finally rejected, and for 
eleven years it lay pigeon-holed in the 
Privy Council office. The case of Connecti- 
cut versus the Mohegan Indians, which came 
before the council in 1704, was not finally 
settled in favor of the colony till 1773. 
Most remarkable of all, though delayed by 
diplomatic negotiations, was the claim of 
Jeronimy Clifford, whose estate in Surinam 
had been seized by the Dutch after the ex- 
change of that land for New Amsterdam in 
1667, and whose legal representatives were 
still petitioning the council in 1766^ nearly a 
century later. The extant documents in the 
case would fill a bulky volume. On the other 
hand many decisions were rendered promptly, 
within the year after the petition was re- 
ceived, and it is clear that delays were not 



STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL 181 

always, or even generally, the fault of the 
board. Plaintiffs and respondents were 
equally dilatory, and in 1728 the council, 
complaining of the failure of counsel to 
attend, "whereby great delays have arisen in 
the causes depending before them," declared 
that henceforth the hearing would go on 
whether counsel were present or not. 

Inevitably the British government upheld 
constituted authority when it could, and in 
the main supported the governors against 
colonial complaints. Nevertheless there are 
enough instances of the removal of governors 
for cause, as of Cranfield of New Hampshire, 
Cony of Bermuda, and Cornbury and Hardy 
of New York, to show that it would not up- 
hold the governors in any cases of malad- 
ministration. But where the governors were 
simply endeavoring to carry out their instruc- 
tions and to defend the royal prerogative, the 
board had little patience with the colonial 
side of the case. For this reason, taking into 
account the whole question of disallowance, 
apjpeals, and complaints, it is probable that 
in the long run few aspects of British con- 
trol, either trade laws or restrictive measures, 
contributed more to the growth of an inde- 
pendent American spirit and of a sentiment, 
half unconscious though it was, favorable 



182 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

to an ultimate separation from Great Britain, 
than did these various assertions of royal 
authority, legally right though they were. 
And the exercise of this authority was the 
more effective because in so many cases it 
was successfully enforced. 

In another legal matter, the extension of 
the English common and statute law into 
the colonies, the results were equally inter- 
esting. The refusal of the colonists to admit 
English law in its entirety was due, not so 
much to positive resistance, as to the inability 
of a new country to make use of laws mani- 
festly adapted to a higher and more complex 
order of society. Despite the theory of many 
English lawyers that the common law of 
England went wherever the colonists went, 
the fact remains that English lav/ was form- 
ally adopted by statute in but one of the 
colonies, South Carolina (1712). New Eng- 
land rejected it altogether and made the 
word of God the guide of its courts and the 
basis of court decisions, and with some im- 
portant exceptions refused in the beginning 
to admit any outside legal principles as 
governing its action in any respect whatever. 
In other colonies the common law and prac- 
tice of England frequently prevailed, but all 
the early law was informal and popular, based 



STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL 183 

on a natural sense of justice and equity 
rather than on formal principles already 
defined. New York and the southern colo- 
nies generally accepted the common law, 
where it was suited to the circumstances of 
their life and government, but they all 
departed in many essential particulars from 
English precedents and procedure. 

As the colonies became more settled and 
frontier conditions gave way to more conser- 
vative forms of social order, common-law 
rules entered more largely into their legal 
relations, though certain colonies, such as 
Pennsylvania, introduced modifications of 
considerable moment into the history of 
law in this country. Indeed we may say, 
that before the Revolution American com- 
mon law had reached a more advanced po- 
sition, as regards fairness, simplicity, and 
rapidity of procedure, than had the common 
law of England, and it is a noteworthy fact 
that siich colonies as Pennsylvania, Virginia, 
and South Carolina, where no attempt was 
made deliberately to throw off connection 
with the principles and practice of English 
law, bred lawyers of greater ability and wider 
legal knowledge than did New England dur- 
ing the same period. The latter colonies 
claimed too great a legal independence. 



184 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

Statute law, except as it referred to the 
colonies specifically or was adopted by a 
colonial legislature as the law of the colony, 
was generally rejected in America. In most 
of the colonies very few statutes of the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were 
ever adopted or treated as binding on the 
courts. It was easy to keep out the statutes; 
they were printed documents, often very 
long and bearing special titles, such as the 
Test Act, the Habeas Corpus Act, the Trien- 
nial Act, and the Toleration Act. They 
could not be smuggled in without detection, 
and very few ever did get in that from the 
colonists' point of view were undesirable. 
The Test Act was enforced in some cases, 
though the attorney general of England, when 
the question was presented for his opinion, 
said that it did not apply to the colonies. 
The Triennial Act was adopted more widely, 
and the Toleration Act was generally ap- 
proved. But the common law was another 
matter; it was unwritten law, it was custom- 
ary law, it could be brought in in men's minds 
and could be used almost without suspicion. 
It came in, and kept coming in, in larger and 
larger quantities, as more men came over 
who were learned in the law or colonials went 
to England and were trained in the \a\7. 



STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL 185 

Finally it came in in the form of a great book, 
the Commentaries of Blacks tone, just before 
the Revolution, and some 2500 copies, we 
are told, were bought in the colonies. 

The legal independence of the colonies lies 
in the fact that the common law was never 
forced on the colonies by any of the national 
law courts at Westminster Hall; it was dis- 
pensed in American courts only. As it devel- 
oped it departed from its original form and 
became American common law, not English, 
though Its main features had their origin on 
English soil. The English law in America 
won its victory over the Roman Law planted 
in those parts of the present United States 
that were settled by the Spaniards or the 
Dutch, but the colonists won their victory 
over the English law when they rejected only 
such parts of it as they manifestly needed. 
Legal unity throughout the British empire 
'3id not exist in the eighteenth century. 
Legal separation had already begun when the 
colonists passed laws that even the legal ad- 
visers of the crown acknowledged were neces- 
sary to the existence of the colony, even though 
such laws were not in accord with the corre- 
sponding law in England. 



CHAPTER VIII 

EVASION OF THE ACTS OF PARLIAMENT 

While the colonists were showing their 
determination not to be bound by the terms 
of the king's authority and were resisting to 
a greater or less degree the royal right of dis- 
allowance and appeal and the introduction 
of English law, they were also displaying a 
similar determination to be free from the 
bonds of the British system in matters of 
trade and commerce. In this respect, at 
least, they were defying the power of par- 
liament, for since 1660 the legislative body 
of Great Britain had passed a great many 
acts limiting trade, forbidding manufactures, 
encouraging the production of raw mate- 
rials, and providing for the proper adminis- 
tration of the measures thus laid down. No 
colonist ever seriously denied the right of 
parliament to legislate in the interest of 
England's commercial supremacy, or to 
take such steps as were necessary for the 
protection of British industries from colo- 
nial competition. They accepted this long 
series of parliamentary acts, not always 
without protest, but without denial and 

186 



PARLIAMENTARY ACTS 187 

without serious demur. In endeavoring to 
control colonial trade and to limit colonial 
industry, the British government was m^erely 
upholding its policy, so often declared, of 
maintaining the dependency of the colonies 
on the crown as essential to the prosperity 
of the mother country. It tried by every 
means in its power to encourage the colo- 
nists to devote their whole time to the pro- 
duction of raw materials. It took off all 
export duties on manufactured woollen goods 
and iron ware, that the colonists might obtain 
these articles from England as cheaply as 
possible. It removed the duty on colonial 
raw iron imported to England, that the iron 
industry in America might be encouraged. 
It prohibited the raising of tobacco in Eng- 
land and increased the duty on Spanish 
tobacco, that the colonists might have a 
complete monopoly of the English tobacco 
market. When it was seen that the expor- 
tation of rice from South Carolina and 
Georgia to Portugal was not detrimental 
to British commerce and was directly bene- 
ficial to the colonies, the government per- 
mitted this staple to be carried to the con- 
tinent south of Cape Finisterre, that is, to 
Spain, Portugal, and the cities of the Medi- 
terranean. Later it extended the market to 



188 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

include Africa, the African islands, and South 
America. 

Probably in the long run the navigation 
acts, with their requirements regarding Brit- 
ish manned ships, enumerated commodities, 
and foreign manufactures imported into 
America, rested but lightly on the colonies. 
Certainly for the greater part of the colonial 
period the natural market for sugar and 
tobacco, the chief colonial products, was 
England, and England gave to these staples 
a complete monopoly of her market. How 
far the natural inclinations of the colonies 
were thwarted by the navigation acts and 
how far these acts limited their commercial 
freedom, not in theory, but in actual expe- 
rience, are questions that are hardly capable 
of satisfactory answers. Individual com- 
plaints were frequently heard and cases 
of individual hardship can easily be found 
to illustrate the argument for the colonies, 
but it is not reasonable to conclude that 
colonial trade as a whole was seriously ham- 
pered because the restricting of the market 
wrought injury in specific cases. The south- 
ern and West Indian colonies prospered 
under the navigation acts, and so different 
were the physiographic conditions that what 
benefited the tropical colonies was likely to 



PARLIAMENTARY ACTS 189 

prove prejudicial to the middle and north- 
ern colonies and vice versa. The Molasses 
Act of 1733, which was designed to improve 
the condition of the British planters in the 
West Indies, was a matter of great concern 
to New England, while the clause regarding 
enumerated commodities, which concerned 
the whole southern range of colonies, scarcely 
affected New England at all. 

The methods employed to carry out the 
acts troubled the colonists more than the 
acts themselves. As early as 1676 collectors 
and other customs officials appeared in Amer- 
ica, and during the forty years that followed 
they were extremely pertinacious in their 
attempts to perform their duties. About 
1700 the collectors were aided by courts of 
vice admiralty, the organization and pro- 
cedure of which were those of the civil not 
the common law, and were in consequence 
as thoroughly disliked in America as they 
were in England, because they seemed to en- 
croach upon the jurisdiction of the common- 
law courts. During the first quarter of the 
eighteenth century the customs and vice- 
admiralty officials were a constant source of 
irritation to the colonists, not merely because 
these officials tried to collect duties and con- 
demn ships suspected of illegal trade, but 



190 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

because they did so with an excess of zeal 
which led them into frequent conflicts with 
the colonists. They not only concerned 
themselves with their legitimate duties, but 
they also constituted themselves censors of 
colonial management in general, and they 
were disliked quite as much because they 
were busy-bodies as because they were royal 
oflficials. After 1715 much of the friction was 
removed. The later officials showed less in- 
clination to find fault and in general proved 
a slight check upon colonial freedom in 
matters of trade. 

The customs system in America, while 
it accomplished something in the way of 
adding to the royal exchequer a small 
amount of revenue, proved very lax, and 
though the Board of Trade often sent man- 
datory letters both to the governors and the 
collectors to carry out their instructions, it 
was entirely helpless when it came to the 
test of compelling obedience. Probably 
no single collector or surveyor in the colonies 
was able to live up to the orders that he 
received, and it is also probable that few 
of them made any serious effort to do so. 
Royal officials in the colonies were not well 
rewarded either in pay or gratuities for 
what they accomplished, and were frequently 



PARLIAMENTARY ACTS 191 

turned aside from the strict performance of 
their duties by the opportunities for gain 
which connivance furnished. Salaries were 
often in arrears, fees were controlled by the 
assemblies, and the men who actually did 
the work in America were in a large number 
of cases deputies of those who received the 
original appointments and drew the highest 
pay. It was an age of sinecures, reversions, 
and pluralities in both church and state. 

We cannot measure and we probably will 
never be able to measure the exact amount 
of smugghng and illicit trade that went on 
in America during our colonial era. It 
certainly was no greater and was probably 
far less than that which went on in England, 
Ireland, and Scotland at the same time, at 
Londonderry, Greenock, Ayr, Dumfries, 
Penzance, and the Channel Islands. The 
colonists did trade illegally with Scotland, 
Ireland, and the Continent (Holland, Spain, 
and Portugal), with the Channel Islands and 
the French and Dutch West Indies; they 
smuggled into America manufactured goods, 
wines, and brandies from foreign countries; 
and they did these things with the coopera-, 
tion of the very officials that were sent from 
England to prevent it. But the number of 
such breaches of the acts, as compared with 



192 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

the whole volume of colonial trade, was 
probably not large, and smuggling in Amer- 
ica never took the form of a bloody war such 
as was fought along the English and Scottish 
coasts in the eighteenth century, when the 
secretary at war had to send dragoons into 
the counties to assist the excise men against 
the smugglers. Illicit trading was done in an 
age when official morality was at a low ebb 
and when bribery and the iniquitous fee 
system were closely related the one to the 
other. Many of the lesser officials in Amer- 
ica were dependent on fees for their support 
and their palms were always itching for the 
wherewithal to live. The very fact that the 
colonies grew greatly in wealth and com- 
fort from 1715 to 1760 is sufficient proof that 
neither the navigation acts nor the restric- 
tive measures seriously interfered with their 
natural commercial growth. 

The northern and middle colonies never 
adopted themselves naturally to the British 
colonial and commercial scheme as did the 
southern and West Indian colonies, and 
every effort to compel them to do so ended 
practically in failure. The trade of New 
England, New York, and Pennsylvania was 
not so much with England as with the 
Mediterranean, the Azores, and particularly 



PARLIAMENTARY ACTg; 193 

with the British and foreign We;st Indies, 
which they suppHed with lumber, provisions, 
cattle, horses, and fish. By this trade the 
colonies north of Maryland gained the 
ready money, which they could procure in 
no other way, whereby to purchase of Eng- 
land the large quantities of manufactures 
which they received yearly and for which 
they paid in cash or by bills of exchange. 
To restrict or prevent this trade was to im- 
peril northern prosperity, yet in the eighteenth 
century England was willing to do so. Owing 
to circumstances connected with the eco- 
nomic life of these islands the British colonies 
in the West Indies were suffering from the 
competition of their neighbors, the Dutch 
and French islands, who were able to under- 
sell them in the Continental and colonial 
markets. Colonial ships from New York or 
Philadelphia would carry their provisions, 
horses, and lumber to Jamaica, for example, 
and there instead of exchanging their prod- 
ucts for molasses and sugar would sell for 
cash and pass on for their return cargo to 
the French or Dutch sugar islands, where 
they could buy at better rates. The British 
planters, despoiled of a profitable market 
and stripped of their coin, were threatened 
with ruin and sought the aid of parliament. 



194 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

After many efforts they finally obtained the 
passage of the Molasses Act of 1733, whereby 
the colonists were compelled to pay heavy 
duties on all molasses, sugar, and rum ob- 
tained from the foreign sugar islands. 

Had the act been enforced it would have 
cut off the northern colonies from one of the 
most important sources of their wealth, be- 
cause, as New York claimed in an address to 
the king, the British islands could not take 
all their staple products, and to limit the 
colonial market would lead, not only to a 
glut of their own commodities and a conse- 
quent fall of prices, but also to a cutting off 
of a neighboring market where money 
could be spent to better advantage than in 
the British colonies, Jamaica, Barbadoes, 
and the Leeward Islands. To limit the mar- 
ket to the latter islands would mean inevi- 
tably a rise in the prices of sugar, rum, and 
molasses and a draining of the northern 
colonies of what little coin they had. While 
exact evidence of the evasion of the act of 
1733 is difficult to obtain, it is clear from 
contemporary expressions of opinion that the 
northern colonies continued to trade as 
before with the foreign West Indies. The 
colonists had to break the law in order to 
live. 



PARLIAMENTARY ACTS 195 

England, however, made notable efforts 
to bring the northern colonies within the 
terms of her own policy and to direct their 
energies into the proper channel, the raising 
of raw materials. Though the northerners 
could furnish neither sugar nor tobacco 
they had wide forests from which, in the eyes 
of those concerned, endless supplies of naval 
stores could be procured. Urged on by 
merchants, factors, and colonial governors, 
the Board of Trade recommended to parlia- 
ment the passage of acts providing for heavy 
bounties on all those things that the navy 
needed and which the colonies might pro- 
duce. The efforts in this instance were suc- 
cessful and parliament passed the desired 
legislation. Then the board took up the 
prosecution of the work in earnest. It sent 
over commissioners to teach the colonists 
how to prepare pitch, tar, and turpentine, 
and how to grow hemp; it obtained the 
passage of another act reserving for the use 
of the navy all mast trees of a certain di- 
mension, in woods not in private hands 
growing north of Pennsylvania; it caused 
to be appointed a special surveyor of the 
woods, whose business it was to range over 
this northern territory and to mark with 
the king's broad arrow trees that were suited 



196 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

to the royal purpose. And it did these things 
not once but many times, pursuing its pur- 
pose with energy and determination for 
forty years. 

But scarcely one of the measures really 
succeeded as far as the northern colonies 
were concerned. The southern colonies, 
notably South Carolina, sent over a good 
deal of tar and pitch, but New England and 
New York were not to be turned from their 
natural bent toward agriculture and the 
homespun industries, and the people of 
New Hampshire and Massachusetts treated 
the king's orders pretty much as they pleased. 
The lumber trade of New England was as 
important as the provision trade, and formed 
a necessary and component part of a life 
that was intimately bound up with ship- 
building and the providing of all the boards, 
planks, pipe-staves, beams, and clapboards 
used in the West Indies for building and 
other purposes. The production of naval 
stores was to a greater or less extent detri- 
mental to both these interests and was ham- 
pered by a consistent policy of evasion and 
obstruction. The contractors employed by 
the surveyors of the woods and the men 
licensed by the crown to fell trees in New 
England had their men driven off by the 



I 



PARLIAMENTARY ACTS 197 

Indians, were sued by the owners of lands 
for damages done, or were obstructed by the 
loggers who on several occasions ducked 
their employees in the rivers of New England. 
The loggers outwitted the royal officers and 
cut down the best trees, while the proprie- 
tors of lands either destroyed the trees when 
felled or obstructed their passage to the 
waterside. The colonists brought action 
against the royal workmen for felling mast 
trees and for cutting down other trees in 
order to make a road for hauling, and in both 
cases were able to recover damages. Suits 
for trespass were constantly pending in the 
New England courts. The New England 
governors upheld very lukewarmly the royal 
commands; the colonial courts could not 
be got to convict offenders; and the inhab- 
itants in general defied the royal officials, 
threatened their lives, and ridiculed their 
pretensions. The conflict went on nearly 
to 1760, and in the end the royal authority 
was compelled to give way before the deter- 
mined resistance of New England. As far 
as concerned the raising of naval stores, the 
reservation of mast trees, and the trade with 
the foreign West Indies, the economic inde- 
pendence of New England was very largely 
maintained. 



198 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

No phase of colonial history shows more 
clearly the situation that existed in the 
middle of the eighteenth century than the 
persistent trade which the northern colo- 
nies, and to some extent the southern also, 
carried on with the enemy during the French 
and Indian war. From 1756 to 1761, 
when Great Britain was fighting in India 
and America and on the Continent, was 
subsidizing Frederick the Great, and was 
paying out large sums to recompense the 
American colonies for their share in the 
attacks on Canada, the colonial merchants, 
ship-owners, and captains were engaged in 
commerce with the French to England's 
injury and their own profit. Among the 
French West Indies, on the Gulf of Mexico, 
chiefly at New Orleans, and along the 
northern Canadian frontier, colonial provi- 
sions were carried to the enemy by means of 
every channel and opportunity that the war 
afforded. Colonial merchant ships went to 
the French West Indies under flags of truce 
for the exchange of prisoners, but instead 
of French prisoners they carried contraband 
of war; and instead of returning with their 
own people freed by the exchange they 
brought back coin and sugar. They flocked 
to the Dutch island of St. Eustatius and the 



PARLIAMENTARY ACTS 199 

Spanish town of Monte Christi, and these 
West Indian harbors became veritable clear- 
ing houses of traffic with French merchant- 
men and ships of war. All the northern 
colonies engaged in this business without 
compunction, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania 
being the greatest offenders, though even 
Virginia and South Carolina could not keep 
clear of this alluring opportunity of making 
a profit at the expense of their allegiance to 
the British crown. The trade with New 
Orleans enabled the French to extend their 
influence over the Creeks and Cherokees 
in the south and so to menace the South 
Carolina and Georgia frontiers; the hundreds 
of colonial ships that went to the West Indies, 
not only enabled the French fleets to stock 
themselves with provisions and to fit out 
privateers against the English, but they also 
saved the French colonies from the danger 
of being starved into surrender. 

The results of this illegal trade with the 
enemy, as far as the British were concerned, 
were twofold in their injury: they rendered 
provisions scarce in America and prevented 
the armies of Amherst and Forbes from ob- 
taining an adequate supply; and they raised 
the price of provisions to such a height that 
it was cheaper to send the provisions from 



200 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

England than it was to buy them in America. 
Zealously as the British navy sought to 
break up the practice, it was never successful, 
for though often checking the trade for a 
time it was outwitted in the end by the inge- 
nuity of the colonists. The significance of 
this extraordinary aspect of American activity 
during the war lies, not so much in the 
independent commercial spirit which it dis- 
played, as in the fact that the colonists 
seemed wholly unaware of the disloyalty to 
England that it involved. They allowed 
their eagerness for commercial gain to cloud 
their sense of obligation toward the mother 
country in time of war. Perhaps it is only 
fair to say that the determination of the 
colonies to neglect imperial interests to the 
advantage of their own prosperity was but 
the counterpart of Great Britain's declared 
purpose of using the colonies as a source of 
profit to herself. In one sense the attitude 
of the colonies was merely a defiant but 
logical expression of resistance to the policy 
which Great Britain had been endeavoring 
to carry out for a century. 

Similar relations between Great Britain 
and the colonies in the eighteenth century 
could be discovered in other directions. 
Difficulties over colonial boundaries, not one 



PARLIAMENTARY ACTS 201 

of which had been settled in 1700, often led 
to royal intervention, whereby colonial legis- 
lation was invalidated by the Privy Council, 
acting on the recommendation of the Board 
of Trade setting as a kind of high court of 
arbitration. England's financial policy, as 
seen in the attempts to regulate the coin of 
the colonies in 1704 and the constant dis- 
allowing of all acts passed in the colonies 
for tlie issue of bills of credit or paper money, 
was wrecked because the colonies would 
conform to it as rarely as possible. The 
attitude of the British government was deter- 
mined by commercial requirements and not 
by any adequate understanding of what 
the colonies wanted or ought to have. The 
persisting repeal of acts of this character irri- 
tated the colonial assemblies, which may 
not have been very wise but which were at 
least more familiar with colonial finances 
than was the Board of Trade. An age 
which saw the successful operation of the 
Bank of England might have been inter- 
ested to do something to provide for the 
colonies a more stable form of circulating 
medium than that which they possessed. 
But no steps in that direction were ever 
taken by the board, because its interest 
in colonial finance was limited entirely 



202 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

to the commercial welfare of British 
merchants. 

In view of the ends which British policy 
sought to attain, it is not surprising that 
loyalty to England in the period before the 
Revolution did not exist among the colo- 
nists as a whole. Even though, in official 
utterances, colonial leaders proclaimed loudly 
their loyalty to the crown, and even though 
such prominent men as Adams and Jefferson, 
in public address, gave out words expressive 
of loyal sentiment, the words were unac- 
companied by deeds and by that spirit of 
sacrifice without which true loyalty cannot 
exist. Colonial records fail to disclose a 
single instance where the colonies, through 
their assemblies or through the action of 
any considerable number of their people, 
yielded voluntarily and willingly on any 
question where the legal rights of the mother 
country came into conflict with the deter- 
mination of the colonists to control their own 
affairs. From the beginning, whether the 
immediate authority over them was a com- 
pany, a proprietor, or the crown, the colonists 
in one way or another, at different times and 
under different conditions, made every effort 
to rid themselves of every right, practice, or 
institution that prevented a free exercise of 



PARLIAMENTARY ACTS 203 

their own government or ran counter to 
their own economic needs. Wliere the inter- 
ests of Great Britain did not clash with the 
material or political interests of the colo- 
nists, the latter conformed to acts and in- 
structions emanating from parliament or king, 
but where the advantages were manifestly 
with the mother country alone the colonial 
opposition was determined and unceasing. 

It is not surprising that England and the 
colonies should have been in conflict when 
their aims were so diametrically opposed. 
England's interest in the colonies was but 
one of many concerns that perplexed the 
statesmen of the eighteenth century. Many 
of the controversies, due to orders and 
instructions drawn up three thousand miles 
away and based upon a somewhat doctrin- 
aire view of the place that colonies ought 
to occupy in the plan of a great empire, were 
only half-heartedly supported by those en- 
trusted with royal authority. To British 
ofiicials colonial questions were a thing apart, 
to the colonists the principles involved were 
essential to their very existence. Self-con- 
trol became the breath of their life, the most 
vital part of their effort to build up strong 
and healthy communities, in which com- 
fort, happiness, and solvency should be the 



204 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

determining features of their success. Hun- 
dreds of such efforts in the direction of 
independence, expended during a period of 
a century and a half, were creating, hue 
upon Hne, a situation in which independence 
of outside control was becoming the most 
conspicuous feature of their history. In 
this way was colonial independence won, 
before a single American leader had dared 
to deny his allegiance, to raise his voice in 
behalf of separation, or to take up arms in a 
military struggle for the severing of the legal 
ties which bound him to the mother country. 



CHAPTER IX 

ATTEMPTS AT COLONIAL UNION 

The movement of the colonies toward 
independence of the mother country in all 
that concerned their daily life and govern- 
ment was not necessarily accompanied by 
a corresponding movement toward union 
among themselves or the growth of a dis- 
tinctive American national feeling. In the 
seventeenth century the colonial settlements 
were small, isolated, and obscure. They 
were confined to the coast or to the lower 
waters of the navigable rivers, each in a 
world by itself, surrounded by forests that 
were difficult to traverse, and confronted by 
frequent dangers from wild animals and the 
Indians. Rivers and coast waters were the 
customary highways of travel, and, except 
along certain beaten paths, few were suffi- 
ciently venturesome to pass by land from 
one colony to another. 

New England with its frequent migrations 
and planting of new towns developed a 
community of interest which led to repeated 
journeyings from one section to another. 
Communication between Long Island, New 

205 



206 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

York, Albany, and East New Jersey was not 
difficult, and the interchange of visits and 
staple products was a fairly common occur- 
rence. Similarly West. New Jersey, Pennsyl- 
vania, and Delaware were in close connection, 
for the waters of the Delaware river made 
intercommunication an essential part of the 
life of the middle colonies. Maryland and 
Virginia stood in a similar relationship, for 
the wide Chesapeake formed a natural 
highway for the traveller, and offered a con- 
venient means of commercial intercourse. 
From Virginia to North Carolina was a 
journey fraught with difficulties, while South 
Carolina, far off to the southward, was more 
remote from the northern colonies than it 
was from the West Indies, with which it 
stood on terms of close commercial fellow- 
ship. 

Within its own environment, each colony, 
settled at different times and under different 
circumstances, was working out its own 
destiny with little regard for the others. 
Each had its own problems to solve, which 
absorbed the time and attention of its 
people, and inevitably strong sentiments of 
individualism and particularism tended to 
dominate its actions. These sentiments were 
strengthened by intercolonial rivalries and 



ATTEMPTS AT COLONIAL UNION 207 

disputes which manifested themselves during 
the greater part of the colonial era. 

Boundary difficulties began with the grant- 
ing of charters to Maryland and Pennsyl- 
vania and continued to create friction among 
the colonies for more than a century. Be- 
tween Maryland and Virginia, Maryland 
and Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania and New 
York, the trouble first appeared, while Massa- 
chusetts was at one time or another in serious 
conflict with New Hampshire, Rhode Island, 
and Connecticut. New York was a long 
time settling its boundary line with New 
England, and after much bickering Virginia 
and North Carolina reached a satisfactory 
settlement, and the world obtained a delight- 
ful piece of colonial literature, William Byrd's 
History of the Dividing Line, first published 
in 1841. In nearly every instance the home 
government was called in to appoint a com- 
mission and settle the difficulty. The colonies 
also discriminated against each other in the 
imposition of customs dues, which led to 
retaliatory legislation that sometimes devel- 
oped into petty commercial wars. There 
was no common currency in the colonies, 
and each had its own standards of value, 
which prevented ready commercial trans- 
actions, particularly after the adoption of 



208 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

bills of credit and the consequent deprecia- 
tion of paper currency. Massachusetts on 
one occasion passed a law excluding all New- 
Hampshire paper money from the colony, 
and Penn early sent a protest to England 
against certain laws of Maryland imposing 
duties on commodities from Pennsylvania. 

The tendency of the larger colonies to 
assume an overbearing attitude toward their 
weaker neighbors found illustration in the 
seeming desire of Massachusetts and Con- 
necticut to eliminate Rhode Island, as they 
had already done Plymouth and New Haven, 
and in the determination of New York to 
checkmate the attempt of New Jersey to 
obtain independent commercial privileges. 
Pennsylvania was none too gracious toward 
Delaware, and Virginia viewed with scorn 
the settlers of North Carolina as vagabonds 
and pirates. The yoking of New York and 
New Jersey, and Massachusetts and New 
Hampshire under common governors led to 
determined efforts at separation, which when 
effected left the colonies farther apart than 
ever. Between the south and the north there 
prevailed little harmony of sentiment, for the 
Virginians early displayed disdain for the 
"Saints of New England," whom they dis- 
liked for their pettiness in trade and shrewd- 



ATTEMPTS AT COLONIAL UNION 209 

ness even to sharpness in business dealings. 
As upholders of aristocratic standards, the 
royal prerogative, and the Anglican church, 
the southerners had little tolerance for the 
"peculiarities" of the Quakers or the demo- 
cratic independency of the Puritans. Indeed, 
apart from their common origin as English- 
men and common home on the colonial 
seaboard, the scattered colonists in America 
possessed little that was favorable to unity 
of action or community of thought. 

Nevertheless as the settlements grew with 
the increase of years forces were at work 
breaking down the isolation and bringing 
the colonists nearer together. Though in- 
crease of population and the filling up of 
the unoccupied areas inevitably brought 
the boundary questions to a head, they 
gave opportunities of more frequent contact 
and consequent understanding. Intercolonial 
jmigration, which began on a large scale 
after the turn of the seventeenth century, 
carried thousands of colonists from the 
northern and middle colonies southward. 
The Connecticut settler was seemingly a 
wanderer by instinct, while German Palatine, 
French Huguenot, and Scots-Irish rarely 
remained in the place of their first land- 
ing. The Germans moved from New York 



210 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

into Pennsylvania and on to the mountain 
valleys of Maryland and Virginia, the French 
from the coast to the interior of Virginia and 
South Carolina; while in that famous exodus 
of the Protestant inhabitants of Ulster 
county, Ireland, in which it is estimated that 
a third of the population crossed the Atlantic, 
a wandering was begun which did not end 
with the landing on the colonial coast. The 
Scots-Irish penetrated to the frontier towns 
of New England, moved westward into 
New York, entered Pennsylvania by way of 
Chester county and pushed back toward 
the centre of the state. From there many 
went southward, some remaining with the 
Germans in Maryland and Virginia, others 
continuing their journeyings to the Wax- 
haws in South Carolina. Though many of 
these wayfarers in search of homes identi- 
fied themselves with the communities into 
which they came, others, particularly in the 
back-countries, inevitably were weakened in 
their attachment to a locality and became in 
a sense the denizens of a larger country. 
Narrow and restricted though the life was of 
these dwellers in the wilderness, it was freer 
in its independence of prejudice and the 
spirit of separatism than was the life of the 
colonists along the coast. 



ATTEMPTS AT COLONIAL UNION 211 

Increased facilities for communication came 
slowly. The early settler had followed 
biiEalo tracts and Indian trails and the 
paths of the cattle driver and fur trader who 
preceded him. Clearings were made, ferries 
provided, fords discovered, bridges built, 
morasses filled in or covered with corduroy, 
and gradually roads appeared. From such 
cities as Boston and Philadelphia comfor- 
table travel was possible in many directions, 
and connections were made from the Dela- 
ware to the head of the Chesapeake very 
early. Within the settled area of the coast 
passable highways were built more speedily 
in the north than in the south, but it was 
not until the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
tury that a continuous journey from Ports- 
mouth to Philadelphia was made possible. 
With the back-country connections were 
late in coming. Not until 1735 were the 
Berkshires reached; Chesapeake bay was 
a water unseen by the upper Maryland set- 
tlers till after 1740; while in Virginia and the 
Carolinas the occupied frontier lay apart by 
itself, and beaten paths and ways for teams 
and wagons were not opened until nearly the 
end of the colonial era. Nevertheless each trail, 
path, road, and highway was a factor promot- 
ing colonial intercourse and understanding. 



212 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

Travel was largely by water. Small 
vessels, schooners, sloops, shallops, and wher- 
ries passed up and down the navigable 
rivers, ventured around Cape Cod and 
through Long Island Sound, furrowed the 
waters of the Delaware and the Chesapeake, 
and found their way through the inland 
estuaries of the Carolinas. As trade increased 
and the need of transportation became 
pressing, larger vessels were built, which 
acting in conjunction with the land routes 
distributed the staple products of New 
England, New York, and Pennsylvania, and 
gave rise to a coasting trade, which became 
a very real factor in furthering intercolonial 
migration and communication. Each river 
town of New England became a builder of 
small ships, in which the New Englanders 
passed from colony to colony, bartering their 
provisions and fish for tobacco, grain, and 
furs. These small maritime journeys, these 
trading ventures from port to port, distrib- 
uting colonial staples and scattering news of 
events happening within the colonies or in 
England, drew the colonies into a closer 
relationship and broadened the knowledge 
which each had of the others. 

Postal facilities followed the opening of 
roads, but remained for many years irregu- 



I 



ATTEMPTS AT COLONIAL UNION 213 

lar and uncertain. Mail service had been 
established by act of parliament in 17 10, 
but even at an earlier period local enterprise 
had provided a means for the despatch of 
letters from colony to colony as far south 
as.Williamsburg, the seat of government of 
Virginia. But the postage rates were almost 
prohibitive and the time required to go from 
Boston to Philadelphia was never less than a 
week. It took Governor Pownall seven days 
to go from Boston to Elizabeth. Newspapers 
appeared first with the Boston News Letter 
in 1704 and the Boston Gazette in 1719, and 
by 1768 there were six Boston newspapers, 
each of which consisted of a single leaf 
printed on both sides, or of two leaves printed 
on three or more often four sides. The edi- 
tions were small and the circulation local, 
and the influence of newspapers upon the 
spread of postal conveniences was for years 
very slight. Many of the colonies went for 
weeks and months without outside news of 
any kind, cut off from the world at large, ab- 
sorbed in their own affairs. Connecticut got 
its news from Boston, North Carolina from 
Virginia, and news from England, the Conti- 
nent, and the West Indies was more frequently 
received than news of the colonies by each 
other. The disorganized condition of the postal 



214 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

service appeared most conspicuously during 
the French and Indian war. Abercrombie 
wrote from New York in 1758 that six 
weeks after he had despatched a letter to 
Montgomery in South Carolina he had re- 
ceived no reply, and Forbes in western Penn- 
sylvania could complain that he received 
news so late that it was "of so old a date 
there is no trusting of it." Littelton of South 
Carolina having received on August 2 a 
letter sent from Philadelphia on May 8, 
wrote in exasperation to Pitt that "some 
new regulations in the post throughout the 
provinces" were "highly necessary for the 
king's service." 

Thus at the beginning of the fourth inter- 
colonial war, the colonies remained widely 
separated, insular in their experiences and 
prejudices, ignorant in large measure of 
each other and tenacious of the powers which 
each had won in its struggle with the royal 
prerogative. Thomas Banister, a merchant 
of Boston, had declared in 1715, that the 
notion of the plantations ever setting up for 
themselves was wild and ungrounded. "Dif- 
ferent schemes, notions, customs, and man- 
ners, " he said, "will forever divide them from 
one another and unite them to the crown. 
He that will be at the trouble of reviewing 



ATTEMPTS AT COLONIAL UNION 215 

only the religion of the continent, where he 
will find [adherents] of every denomination, 
from the earliest Gnostick to the modern 
Prophet, and consider how tenacious each 
sect is, will never form any idea of a com- 
bination to the prejudice of the land of our 
forefathers." And fifty years later, Franklin, 
knowing the variety of governments, laws, 
religions, staple products, habits and ways 
of life, and degrees of intellectual attain- 
ment, could affirm that " however necessary 
a union of the colonies had long been for 
their common defense, they had never been 
able to effect such union among themselves." 
Until the days of the Stamp Act the energies 
of the colonies were largely concentrated on 
the individual advantages which each might 
obtain in its struggle with the royal authority, 
and they rarely looked beyond their own 
boundaries in thinking of the future, or al- 
lowed the higher ideal of colonial union to 
encroach upon the immediate purpose in 
hand. 

Nevertheless, efforts at union had been 
made in the seventeenth and early eighteenth 
centuries. Such efforts were due in nearly 
every case to outside influences and were 
not the result of any spontaneous desire for 
union arising in America. New England, 



216 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

with homogeneous population and common 
religious organization and purpose, was the 
first to experiment with a confederation for 
mutual protection and support. Fearing the 
outcome of the war in England, in which 
should the royal cause triumph its own 
autonomy might be endangered, and needing 
protection against the French, Dutch, and 
Indians, who were threatening them on the 
north and west, the New England colonies 
banded together in 1643. Maine was not 
included because of the distance, and Rhode 
Island was denied admission because it was 
deemed a factious colony. The experiment 
was not very successful, and is chiefly inter- 
esting as an attempt at a loose confederation, 
which was wrecked by the overbearing atti- 
tude of Massachusetts, and by the new situ- 
ation which followed the restoration of the 
Stuarts in 1660, the capture of New Amster- 
dam, and the absorption of New Haven by 
Connecticut. Frowned on as a useless con- 
trivance and a needless expense the confed- 
eration came to an end in 1684, when Massa- 
chusetts lost its charter, at the very time 
when the home authorities themselves were 
planning a larger scheme of union to cover in 
part the same territory. 

Early in its career the Lords of Trade had 



ATTEMPTS AT COLONIAL UNION 217 

become convinced that from the standpoint 
of trade and commerce and military defence 
an increase in the number of colonies in 
America was unwise, and that even those 
which existed were too scattered and weak 
to offer a successful resistance in case of 
attack. The committee therefore proposed 
and eventually carried out a scheme for the 
union of all the colonies north of Maryland 
in a single dominion under a single governor 
and council, in which there should be no 
representative assembly of the people. For 
the execution of this scheme the way had 
been prepared by Edward Randolph, the 
man to whom more than to anyone else 
Massachusetts owed the loss of her charter, 
and in May, 1686, Joseph Dudley became 
the president. But he was soon superseded 
by Andros, who was sent out as governor, 
arriving in December. The territory, at 
first, covered Maine, New Hampshire, and 
Massachusetts, and the King's Province 
west of Narragansett bay. In 1686 Ply- 
mouth and Rhode Island were added, in 
1687 Connecticut, in 1688 New York and 
New Jersey, and according to the original 
plan Pennsylvania, Maryland, Carolina, and 
the Bahamas were to be deprived of their 
charters and joined to the enlarged dominion. 



218 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

As Bermuda, Virginia, and the West Indian 
colonies were already royal, the successful 
consummation of this plan would have 
royalized all the colonies and have laid the 
foundations for a symmetrical colonial em- 
pire in the west. 

The union provided for in the Dominion 
of New England stands in striking contrast 
with the league set up in 1G43. Instead of 
preserving the independence of the several 
colonies, the new system abolished all local 
autonomy, reduced the annexed colonies to 
the position of administrative districts, with 
rights of delegation to the common council 
at Boston, and retained under central con- 
trol all judicial, military, and commercial 
interests. For nearly three years the king 
ruled through his governor over a single 
royal province extending from Nova Scotia 
to the Delaware. Pennsylvania was exemp- 
ted by special Stuart intervention, and 
Maryland, the Carolinas, and the Bahamas 
were never proceeded against because of 
time and distance. With the fall of James 
II in 1689 the dominion broke apart into its 
original elements, leaving no trace behind, 
except the legend of the Charter Oak in Con- 
necticut, where the charter of the colony was 
in popular repute supposed to have been 



J 



ATTEMPTS AT COLONIAL UNION 219 

concealed, and a bitter hostility in Massachu- 
setts for the king and his supporters, and 
for the Anglican church, which in 1686 had 
been set up in Boston, with the town house 
for its sanctuary and an attendance of three 
or four hundred members as a witness to 
its prominence. To the list of enemies of 
that colony, which already included the 
names of Gorges and Mason, were added 
those of Randolph, Dudley, Andros, and 
all the Stuarts, and there they have remained 
to this day. 

With the opening of the war between 
France and the Grand Alliance, to which 
England became a party with the accession 
of William III, questions of defence against 
the French in America became a matter of 
serious concern, particularly to the northern 
colonies. In 1690, at the suggestion of Mas- 
sachusetts, an intercolonial congress was 
held in New York, to which delegates came 
from Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, 
and New York, and letters were sent from 
Rhode Island, Maryland, and Virginia prom- 
ising aid and support in any expedition that 
the congress might undertake. An attack 
upon Montreal was planned, and the com- 
bined forces actually reached Lake Cham- 
plain. But there they halted, discussions 



220 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

arose, sickness hindered the enterprise, and 
in the end practically nothing was accom- 
plished. Cooperative colonial action seemed 
unobtainable, and so lukewarm did the 
colonists appear that Governor Fletcher of 
New York, who had also been commis- 
sioned governor of Pennsylvania and New 
Jersey and military head of Connecticut, and 
had tried in vain to arrange another meeting 
in 1693, could report that the "small colonies 
on this main" were "as much divided in 
their interests and affection as Christian 
and Turk." 

The need of action became so imperative 
that complaint after complaint was sent to 
England from men in America in many walks 
of life. In 1696 WilHam Penn drafted a 
"brief and plain scheme" for a yearly con- 
gress, to be composed of twenty deputies 
from ten colonies, to meet in New York 
under the presidency of the royal governor 
there, and "to debate and resolve of such 
measures as are mqst advisable for their 
better understanding and the public tran- 
quillity and safety." Others, notably traders 
and merchants, threatened with the loss of 
their fishing and their commerce in furs, 
masts, timber, and peltry, begged for the 
establishment of a common government 



ATTEMPTS AT COLONIAL UNION 221 

under a single head, which, while preserving 
the "civil rights, properties, and customs" 
of the colonists, would protect the English 
settlements and allay the apprehensions and 
discouragements due to the French peril. 
A body of New England traders urged that 
a governor be sent over with 1000 men, arms 
and ammunition, cannon and other ordnance, 
four frigates, and a fire-ship. Recommenda- 
tions for bringing the colonies under a single 
military head had been made by Roman 
Catholic priests in Maryland in 1689, the 
same idea was repeated by Governor Nichol- 
son of Virginia in 1692, and the merchants in 
particular urged a union under one governor 
with free trade between the provinces. 
Livingston in 1701 and Coxe in 1722 empha- 
sized the plan and the Board of Trade was 
in entire sympathy with the idea and advo- 
cated it strenuously. 

The board failing to win the support of 
parliament during the years from 1701 to 
1715 renewed its efforts in 1722 and recom- 
mended that the proprietary and charter 
governments should be resumed by the 
crown "either by purchase, agreement, or 
otherwise," and a single government be 
established whereby alone the respect of the 
Indians could be maintained, trade promoted. 



222 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

quit-rents gathered, and the woods protected. 
Each colony was to retain its governor and 
assembly, but over all was to be placed a 
governor general with a fixed salary paid by 
the crown and a council composed of dele- 
gates from each colony. Had a competent 
person been found, who would have accepted 
the post, it is probable that the experiment 
would have been tried, but the Earl of Stair, 
to whom the position was offered, refused it 
and the board did not pursue the matter 
further, though it never fully abandoned 
the scheme. It substituted methods of per- 
suasion and processes of law, and having 
succeeded with Carolina and the Bahamas, 
attempted to win over Connecticut and 
Rhode Island. But these colonies refused 
to surrender their charters, Connecticut, 
in a letter very shrewdly written, reminding 
the Whig government that "the vacating 
and taking away of charters of incorporation, 
without just cause of forfeiture" was char- 
acteristic of reigns like that of the late King 
James, "when all corporations and charters 
were crush't and trampled under and the 
king's subjects made vassals and slaves in 
defiance of Magna Charta and the liberties 
of a British subject." Such a remark, like 
other similar hints in letters from these 



ATTEMPTS AT COLONIAL UNION 223 

colonies, was to the Whigs "a tender plot 
and likely to be thought of at home." 

Other suggestions were advanced at this 
period, either privately or in pamphlets, by 
various persons in England and America, 
for the subject was very much in the thoughts 
of men at this time. Dinwiddie of Virginia 
advocated two confederacies. Rev. Richard 
Peters of Pennsylvania outlined a fourfold 
division with an annual committee of union 
for each, a system of interdivisional corre- 
spondence, and a single "union" regiment of 
thirteen companies commanded by officers 
appointed by the king and paid from inter- 
nal duties levied "on such things as are in 
most general use." This project, like those 
of Hutchinson of Massachusetts and Weare 
of New Hampshire, both of whom, with 
Peters, were members of the later Albany 
conference of 1754, remained unpublished 
and only serve to show what was passing in 
men's minds. Occasional conferences were 
held, between 1740 and 1750, at New York 
or Albany, but they were scantily attended 
and had no wider purpose than to arrange 
satisfactory relations with the Indians. 

The approach of war with France after 
1750 brought the whole matter of colonial 
defence prominently to the front. The royal 



224 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

governors and the Board of Trade looked 
on the future with deep misgivings. The 
French troops in America, commanded by a 
single head, were able to act promptly and 
with effect, while the English colonies seemed 
"sunk into a profound lethargy and, resigned 
to stupidity and slumbering, appeared insen- 
sible to the threatening danger." The con- 
flicts which the assemblies were carrying on 
with the governors for the control of the 
government served to blind them to the 
menace of French attack, and they used 
every attempt at military defence as an 
opportunity to gain some new advantage at 
the expense of the crown. No troops could 
be raised or money appropriated except after 
prolonged debate and acrimonious discus- 
sion, and obstructions often trivial were 
thrown in the way of every scheme for co- 
operation. The New England colonies were 
angered at the "total inactivity and supine- 
ness" of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and 
North Carolina, while all watched each other 
with a jealous eye, fearing lest by chance 
one should do more than its legitimate share. 
"I have learnt," wrote Governor Sharpe of 
Maryland, "not to entertain very sanguine 
hopes of the resolutions of American assem- 
blies. As often as they have been convened. 



ATTEMPTS AT COLONIAL UNION 225 

urged, and intreated to aid each other in 
defending His Majesty's territories and 
their own properties, so often almost have 
they as it were unanimously refused to 
provide against the dangers that threaten 
them." 

Similar complaints from other governors 
had an important influence upon the authori- 
ties at home, who at this crisis made a 
new effort to provide for concerted action. 
In August, 1753, Secretary Holdernesse 
warned the governors of the approaching 
conflict, and in September the Board of 
Trade instructed them to call a conference 
at Albany for the purpose of renewing and 
strengthening the "ancient covenant chain" 
with the Six Nations. In a later letter to 
Lieutenant Governor DeLancey of New 
York, who was to be the presiding oflScer, 
the board, believing that the colonies were 
already convinced of the necessity of a 
"general union of strength and interest," 
urged that the opportunity be improved for 
the drafting of a plan of union, which could 
never be effected "in the seperate and divided 
state of the colony's without some general 
congress." At the same time, acting under 
instructions from the secretary of state, the 
board set about drafting a plan of its own. 



226 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

On June 19,^^54^there met in the court- 
house at Albany twenty-four delegates, from 
all the colonies except New Jersey, Virginia, 
the Carolinas, and Georgia. Virginia and 
the Carolinas wished to be considered present, 
though circumstances prevented them from 
sending representatives. Indian questions 
having first been taken up and partly settled, 
a motion was made on June 24 that the com- 
missioners deliver their opinion whether a 
union of all the colonies was not absolutely 
necessary for their security and defence. 
This motion was passed unanimously, and 
a committee was appointed to prepare and 
receive plans and digest them into one general 
plan for the inspection of the conference. 
This plan as finally perfected provided for 
a president general appointed by the crown 
and a council chosen by the assemblies to 
meet yearly at Philadelphia, with power 
over Indian affairs, new settlements, mili- 
tary and naval affairs, the making of laws 
and levying of taxes for these purposes, the 
former of which were to be transmitted to 
England for the royal approval. Thus the 
scheme combined the rights of the colonies 
with a federal control over certain forms of 
taxation and an ultimate royal approval of the 
laws adopted by the new council. Adopted 



ATTEMPTS AT COLONIAL UNION 227 

by the conference on July 10 the plan was 
presented to the individual colonies, as none 
of the delegates except those of Massachusetts 
had been given adequate powers. By them 
it was unanimously rejected, Connecticut 
deeming it "a very extraordinary thing and 
against the rights and privileges of English- 
men." Governor Shirley afterward wrote 
that the commissioners had no hope that the 
recommendation would have any effect, nor 
did he believe that any proper plan could be 
formed in which the governments would 
unite, because "their different constitutions, / 
situations, circumstances, and tempers" ' 
would prove " an invincible obstacle to their 
agreement upon any one plan in every 
article, or if they should ever happen to 
agree upon one, to their duly carrying it 
into execution." 

Rejection by the colonies decided the ' 
fate of the Albany scheme. It was never 
submitted officially either to the Board of j 
Trade or to parliament. That it would 
have been rejected also in England, had it 
met with favor in America, is probable, as 
it provided for a political union instead of 
jhe military union which the Board of 
Trade desired and which became the basis 
of the plan which the board itself drafted 



228 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

and submitted to the king on August 9. The 
board was seemingly afraid of a strong and 
efficient pohtical union in America. It may 
have thought that the colonies would thereby 
get beyond the control of the home author- 
ities. If individual colonies had already 
shown themselves impatient of dependence 
on the British crown, what might not all 
the colonies accomplish, should they act 
together? 



CHAPTER X 

EVENTS LEADING TO THE STAMP ACT 
CONGRESS 

Union, for either political or military 
purposes, had proved impossible of attain- 
ment in the year 1754, when the separatist 
tendencies were too strong to be overcome 
by any common interest which had mani- 
fested itself up to that time. Common action 
in cooperation with England was too slender 
a motive, even when it involved the security 
of their lives and property, to draw the 
colonists from their individual struggles 
against England in behalf of their so-called 
rights as Englishmen. Only when under 
changed conditions England herself became 
the common object of the resentment of the 
colonists, was a passion aroused sufficiently 
powerful to master the suspicions and jeal- 
ousies that had hitherto held sway. From 
the Albany conference to the congress held 
at New York to protest against the Stamp 
Act, we pass through a series of events of 
first importance in American history, in that 
they mark the turning of the current of 
colonial sentiment and its flowing, very 

229 



230 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

slightly at first, in the opposite direction. 
When this result has been accomplished we 
have reached the end of the . colonial era^ 
properly so-called. 

During the war between England and 
France in America, commonly known as the 
French and Indian war, each colony mani- 
fested with unmistakable clearness its 
strength and weakness and the motive that 
influenced its policy. New England dis- 
played public spirit, voted money and men 
liberally, and cooperated zealously in mili- 
tary undertakings. Massachusetts, under 
such tactful men as Shirley and Pownall, was 
proud of its position as leader. Connect- 
icut and Rhode Island acted with readiness 
and were loyal to the cause. New Hamp- 
shire, pleading poverty, was chary of expen- 
diture and seemed without interest in the 
war. The assembly of New York, while 
appropriating money, quarrelled with the 
governor over its use. But when once the 
assembly had made good its claims, it acted 
more willingly and with a better spirit. 
New Jersey proved eager and willing, was 
less jealous of its neighbors, and showed, as 
Governor Morris wrote "a due regard both 
for the rights of government and the liberties 
of the people." Pennsylvania, on the other 



THE STAMP ACT CONGRESS 231 

hand, spent the seven years in quarrelling 
with goyernor and proprietary, and the 
members of the assembly preferred to see 
their province invaded by the enemy rather 
than to carry out the royal and proprietary, 
instructions. By their insistence on the 
retention of all authority, and their stubborn- 
ness in prolonging debate and throwing re- 
sponsibility for failure on the shoulders of 
the governor, they impeded military opera- 
tions till even the kindly Forbes, conducting 
the campaign on the western frontier, could 
write in exasperation that their tardy pro- 
ceedings would greatly distress the active 
operations which he had planned. Maryland 
as well preferred to leave the colony defence- 
less rather than yield on points in dispute, 
and during the last five years contributed 
very little to the cause. The trouble in both 
Pennsylvania and Maryland was in no small 
part due to proprietary interference and 
demands, but the result was incompetent 
soldiers, inadequate militia laws, and ex- 
treme parsimony in the furnishing of funds. 

The southern colonies cooperated only to 
a very small extent. In Virginia at first the 
talk was all of the rights of Englishmen, 
and the assembly so guarded the people that 
only vagrants could be enlisted for service 



232 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

outside the colony. There seemed Httle loy- 
alty to the military cause, the best colonists 
would not enlist, desertions were frequent, 
and it was not until the later years that any 
sympathy or liberality was displayed. As 
if ashamed of her record, Virginia finally 
awoke to her obligations and toward the 
end voted money freely, compensating in 
large measure for the earlier neglect. In 
North Carolina there was the same legis- 
lative obstruction, due to factional disputes 
and conflicts with the governor, often over 
most trivial matters. Conditions were at 
best unfavorable, drafting was disliked, and 
the laws, better in the plan than in the exe- 
cution, were not carried out. South Carolina, 
the assembly of which was practically su- 
preme, showed a fine record at the opening 
of the war but later confined itself to the task 
of defending its own frontier. Georgia gave 
little military assistance. The poverty of the 
colony was such that all expenses of govern- 
ment had to be met by the crown, and, as the 
assembly said, their abilities were not equal 
to their inclinations. 

Thus the events of the French and Indian 
war did little to advance the cause of union. 
Despite the cooperation of many colonies 
in a common military undertaking, which, it 



THE STAMP ACT CONGRESS 233 

may be, smoothed the way to an eventual 
understanding, the disKke and even the 
enmity of colony for colony were as great in 
1763 as in 1750, while the absorption of each 
in its own affairs was as profound as at any 
time in its history. Few periods of the eight- 
eenth century are more important for the 
study of constitutional progress in the indi- 
vidual colonies than is that from 1756 to 
1763, when questions of money, militia, 
militia laws, drafts, quotas, length of service, 
and the standing of provincial officers and 
levies was fought out in nearly every as- 
sembly. Many of these questions involved 
relations with the crown and the command- 
ing officers in America, but others concerned 
neighboring colonies and the mutual welfare. 
All indicated the presence everywhere of an 
excessive individualism that rendered the 
creation of a political union, based upon the 
principle of a common nationality, seem- \ 
ingly a remote possibility. 

Furthermore the common struggle against 
France did nothing to strengthen the feeling 
of loyalty for Great Britain. The friction 
which resulted from the exasperating system, 
whereby each colony furnished its own quotas 
of men and money, was not overcome by the 
large grants, made by parliament from 1756 



234 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

to 1763 and amounting to more than a mil- 
lion pounds, to recompense the colonies for 
their outlay. The common endurance of 
hardships, which might have served, under 
other circumstances, to allay the mutual 
suspicions of regular and provincial soldiers, 
only widened the breach between them, 
because of the contempt which each felt for 
the other. The British commanders deemed 
the colonial militia capricious and unsteady 
and called them canaille and cowards, while 
the colonials criticised with equal severity 
the British methods of war, and said that the 
failures of the earlier years were entirely due 
to British blunders. Troubles arose over the 
rank of colonial officers, which ended in dis- 
satisfaction and discontent, and interminable 
difficulties were encountered in determining 
periods of service, the quartering of troops, 
and the obtaining of forage and supplies. Of 
all the colonies. South Carolina alone adopted 
the British rules and discipline of war. 

One aspect of the period might well have 
given the British statesmen food for thought, 
had their minds been open to new ideas 
regarding a colonial policy. The royal col- 
onies, where England expected to find loyalty 
and support, were as a rule the most difficult 
for the commanders in America to deal with. 



THE STAMP ACT CONGRESS 235 

while the New England colonies, which were 
historically and economically most antago- 
nistic to the British system of control, were 
generally willing to bear their legitimate 
burden without demur. The royal and pro- 
prietary colonies were very slow to cooperate" 
tor the common defense or for the defense of 
their neighbors, and lent their resources, 
often very unwillingly, to the promotion of 
the common good. They expected England 
to carry out her part of the mutual obligation 
of protecting them against their enemies, 
but were wholly averse to fulfilling their part 
of the contract by offering obedience in 
return. England might have learned the 
lesson that this fact taught and have realized 
that the best and most tractable of the colo- 
nies were those which possessed the greatest 
amount of self-government and were most 
at peace within themselves. But the British 
view of colonial dependence admitted of no 
modification, and the idea of a colony, 
autonomous and commercially independent 
and at the same time loyal and cooperative 
and a strength to the mother country, never 
seriously entered a British mind. At no 
time was the full letter of the British policy 
more vigorously insisted upon than during 
the twenty years fromJJfigJto„1783._ 



236 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

Two incidents took place during the 
last years of the war that brought prom- 
inently to the front the sentiment which pre- 
vailed in certain quarters toward the British 
government. The persistent trade which the 
colonists were carrying on with the enemy 
aroused the British authorities to attempt 
its suppression. They determined to enforce 
the laws of trade, particularly the Molasses 
Act of 1733, and in so doing called on the 
navy to cooperate, at the same time instruct- 
ing the customs officers to employ "writs of 
assistance," enabling them to search anywhere 
they thought best for the purpose of finding 
concealed goods, chiefly the illegally imported 
products of the French and Dutch West 
Indies. The colonists declared these writs 
illegal, and in a famous trial before the 
superior court of Boston, James Otis de- 
claimed against the acts of trade as oppres- 
sive and contrary to natural equity. Two 
years later, the young Patrick Henry, defend- 
ing the law of Virginia in the "two penny" 
case, brought by the clergy to recover their 
losses of salary, due to payment in depre- 
ciated currency rather than in tobacco as 
had previously been the rule, declared in a 
perfervid oratorical effort, plainly designed 
to sway public opinion and to increase his 



THE STAMP ACT CONGRESS 237 

own popularity, that the King of England 
in disallowing the act had degenerated into a 
tyrant. But these speeches were premature. 
The time had not come when utterances of 
this kind could sway public sentiment. 
Significant as they were in anticipating the 
future, they fell on a time when the colonists 
were well aware of the need of continued 
British protection, and understood that sepa- 
ration from Great Britain would mean 
attack and possible annexation by either 
France or Spain. The colonies were not 
prepared to face the issue of providing for 
the naval and military defense of their coast 
and frontier. England was still necessary to 
their existence. 

But the peace of Paris, signed on February 
10, 17^63, marked a great turning point in the 
position of the colonies and of their relations 
with the mother country. The French were 
removed from America on the north and west 
and the Spanish from the Floridas on the 
south. With the single exception of the city 
of New Orleans, the frontier lay open to the 
Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico. Danger 
from outside attack was averted and expan- 
sion toward the west and south was unob- 
structed by any foreign power. No less im- 
portant was the effect of the peace upon the 



238 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

imperial ambitions of Great Britain. In 
retaining Canada and returning Guadeloupe 
and St. Lucia to France, she completely 
reversed her opinion regarding the economic 
superiority of the West Indies, and hence- 
forth took the ground that a great area of 
territory capable of receiving a growing popu- 
lation was more valuable as a market for 
her manufactures than was a group of is- 
lands, the importance of which lay in their 
supply of tropical products. To protect and 
preserve the new continental territories be- 
came from this time the dominant purpose 
of the British ministry, and inevitably de- 
manded the recasting of the imperial policy 
to meet the new situation. 

But in satisfying the demands of the new 
imperialism no change was made in the funda- 
mental principles of the commercial policy. 
The object was the readjustment of the old, 
not the adoption of a new attitude toward the 
colonies. The latter must still remain in 
dependence on the mother country and obe- 
dient to her authority. No recognition could 
be given to the independence already won; 
on the contrary every effort must be made to 
restore the full strength of the royal prerog- 
ative. More important still, the trade laws 
must be enforced, and if necessary supple- 



THE STAMP ACT CONGRESS 239 

mented by additional legislation; and so 
heavy had become the debt to the British 
tax payer, and so untrustworthy the system 
of quotas and requisitions employed in the 
colonies during the recent war, that new 
measures must be taken by the British 
government itself to meet the expenses for 
protection in the future. Furthermore, the 
newly acquired western territory must be 
dealt with in the interest, not only of new 
settlers, but of the Indians also, who occupied 
it, and Canada with its French Roman Catho- 
lic population must be handled with such dis- 
cretion as to transform it into loyal British 
territory. The problems that the statesmen 
of England were called upon to solve at this 
juncture were such as to demand high 
qualities of statesmanship. Unfortunately 
the leaders who faced these problems were, 
with one or two exceptions, men of little 
vision, loyal to the traditions of the past, 
and, as far as they were able to rise above 
the allurements of party intrigue and the / 
thirst for office, were blinded by the glamour* 
of a seK-sufficing empire. 

On October 7, 1763, the king issued a 
proclamation, providing for the government 
of Canada, the Floridas, and Grenada, and 
setting aside the western territory as a 



240 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

temporary reservation for the Indians. In so 
'doing there appears to have been no dehb- 
erate intention of forbidding colonial settle- 
ment west of the Alleghanies, but an Indian 
war, led by Pontiac, a chief of the Ottawas, 
and due to the encroachment and unscrupu- 
lous conduct of colonial traders, demanded 
the adoption of an imperial policy of Indian 
protection. The control of Indian affairs 
must be taken out of the hands of the colo- 
nies, Indian rights must be respected, and 
Indian lands and trade must be placed under 
the direct supervision of Great Britain. An 
elaborate scheme of Indian control was con- 
sidered and in part carried out, but in the 
end it proved too expensive for the govern- 
ment to inaugurate in the existing state of 
its finances, and all attempts to obtain 
parliamentary support for the scheme ended 
in failure. The management of Indian trade 
after 1768 fell back into the hands of the 
colonies, the Illinois country became a 
land of disorder, frequented by fur traders 
and colonists with land and colonization 
schemes to promote, and was lost to sight in 
the greater issues raised by the discontented 
and rebellious colonists in the east. 

To meet the new situation the aid of par- 
liament had now become necessary and 



THE STAMP ACT CONGRESS 241 

inevitable. The idea of calling on the legis- 
lative body of the kingdom to aid the royal 
prerogative in America was not new. It had 
been urged by Privy Council, secretary of 
state, Board of Trade, colonial governors and 
even agents, and by British commanders 
and officers in the late war. As early as 1706, 
Secretary Hedges had declared that if "the 
provinces do not comply in what they at 
present refuse, they cannot expect but a 
remedy will be applied by parliament in 
reasonable matters." In 1729, Newcastle 
had threatened the obstinate assembly of 
Massachusetts with parliamentary interven- 
tion, and in 1735 the Privy Council had 
attempted in similar manner to bring the 
Jamaica assembly to terms. The right of 
parliament to step in where the royal pre- 
rogative was proving insufficient was per- 
fectly understood in America, and no denial 
of its competency was made in the period 
before 1763. Naturally, the colonists were 
anxious to avoid such a contingency, as 
when Connecticut feared that parliament 
might inquire too closely into the working 
of her charter and the Jamaica assembly 
begged of the home government that parlia- 
ment might not be brought into the contro- 
versy; but they did not declare against 



242 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

parliamentary authority, concerning acts 
of trade, regulative measures, or revenue 
bills, until after the issues of 1764 and 1765 
had been raised. 

When, therefore, in 1763 George Gren- 
ville became head of the ministry and faced 
the critical position confronting him, he 
turned to parliament for the necessary legis- 
lation. He made careful inquiries into the 
operation of the acts of trade and obtained 
elaborate reports from the Treasury, the 
commissioners of customs, and the colonial 
governors, and upon the information thus 
received framed the bill which parliament 
passed in 1764, commonly known as the 
Sugar Act, but which in its entirety embraced 
at least three distinct propositions. First, 
to prevent illegal trading by enlarging the 
powers of the admiralty courts, increasing 
the efficiency of the customs service in Amer- 
ica, and employing the ships and officers 
of the navy to aid in enforcing the laws. 
Secondly, to encourage the colonies by re- 
peaHng duties and granting bounties so as 
to enlarge and relieve colonial trade. Thirdly, 
to raise a revenue in America by reviving 
and reenforcing with some modifications 
the Molasses Act of 1733. In this important 
measure the British government declared 



THE STAMP ACT CONGRESS 243 

for the first time its purpose of obtaining a 
revenue from the colonies, but it accompanied 
that declaration with the quieting statement 
that the money thus raised should be ex- 
pended for the protection of the colonies 
themselves. Such protection was to involve 
the maintenance of a standing army of ten 
thousand men, a proposal sure to arouse 
anger and apprehension in America. 

The colonists saw in this measure a menace 
to the independence which they had already 
won, and although the measure was never 
designed as a check upon colonial self-govern- 
ment, as British statesmen construed that 
term, it was viewed in America as an oppres- 
sive and "unconstitutional" interference with 
their rights, rights it may be noticed which 
had been illegally usurped and never ac- 
knowledged by the authorities in England. 
Sympathetic though we may be to the growth 
of constitutional democracy and independ- 
ence in America, we must nevertheless 
recognize the fact that English statesmen 
denied the legality of the very powers which 
the colonists declared were now interfered 
with, and asserted to the end that no colonial 
assembly possessed rights and privileges 
analogous and coequal to those of the House 
of Commons in Great Britain. The term 



244 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

"unconstitutional," so often on the lips of 
colonial orators, had no meaning to an 
English statesman or departmental official, 
and was only significant to the men in Amer- 
ica, who for half a century had been acquiring 
a "constitution" by robbing the crown of 
its prerogatives. Yet in this method of pro- 
cedure America did not stand alone. England 
herself had built up her existing constitutional 
organization in precisely the same way, but 
the parallel passed unnoticed so far as the 
British authorities were concerned. 

It soon became evident that the act of 
1764 would raise a very inadequate revenue 
for the purpose in hand. According to the 
most liberal estimate the amount would not 
exceed one-seventh of the sum required to 
maintain an army in America, quite apart 
from the cost of the Indian establishment 
which the Board of Trade desired to create. 
Grenville was fully aware of the situation 
and had already in hand the further sugges- 
tion of a colonial stamp tax. This suggestion 
did not originate with him. It had already 
been made half a dozen times before, and in 
1763 Henry McCulloh, who had held many 
posts in the colonies, notably in South Caro- 
lina, and was familiar with aspects of the 
financial situation in America, drafted a 



THE STAMP ACT CONGRESS M5 

complete statement of such a scheme and 
presented it to Grenville. There is reason 
to beheve that the latter took it more or 
less ready made from McCuIloh's hand. In 
February, 1765, he introduced the measure 
into the House of Commons, where, after 
considerable debate, it was passed by a 
vote of 205 to 49. In the Lords it was passed 
without a division. By this act stamps 
were to be affixed to all legal and commer- 
cial documents in the colonies, to pamphlets, 
almanacs, newspapers, college diplomas, 
grants of office, licenses, bonds, grants of 
land, playing cards, and dice. The revenue 
thus gained was to be used only for the 
defence of the colonies and, added to that 
which would accrue from the act of 1764, 
was estimated at something less than half 
the cost of the army in America, the remain- 
der to be secured by requisition among the 
colonies themselves. 

The measures of 1764 and 1765 were the 
most conspicuous of many efforts made 
during these years to increase British control 
in America and to limit the independence 
which the colonists had won for themselves. 
Since 1752 Board of Trade, Privy Council, 
secretary of state, and the Treasury had 
all been en^avoring to check the aggressive 



246 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

advance of the colonial assemblies, and to 
recover control of trade and revenue which 
had never been voluntarily resigned. But 
the war had forced a postponement of these 
efforts, and it was not until after 1763 that 
they could be resumed. Governors' instruc- 
tions were made more mandatory, colonial 
laws were subjected to a sharper scrutiny, 
officials in America were selected with greater 
care, and the administrative machinery was 
tightened in many of its parts. The old law 
of 1729 requiring all mariners in America 
as well as England to contribute sixpence a 
month toward the maintenance of Green- 
wich hospital was revived and a special 
collector sent to America for its enforce- 
ment. As early as 1750 the bishop of London 
had urged the establishment of bishops in 
America, and the colonists, particularly the 
Puritans of New England, viewed with dread 
the approaching ascendency of the Episcopal 
organization. In 1764 proposals were sub- 
mitted for protecting British merchants by 
act of parliament against the disordered 
condition of colonial currency, and in the 
same year a single court of vice admiralty 
was provided, to sit in Halifax and to hear 
appeals from each of the admiralty courts 
of the colonies. At the same time a searching 



THE STAMP ACT CONGRESS 247 

examination of the fee system in the colonies 
was begun and continued for a number of 
years, with the intention of regulating finan- 
cial practices in public offices in America. 
During the years 1765 and 1766 commanders 
of the royal navy, acting as customs officers, 
made many seizures for illicit trading, and 
so efficiently was the new Sugar Act enforced 
that the revenue therefrom, which had been 
less than £1000 a year under the old Mo- 
lasses Act, rose to £25,000. The extension of 
the Mutiny Act to America and the new 
provisions regarding the billeting and quar- 
tering of troops served as an added grievance, 
although efforts were made to carry out the 
measure with a reasonable respect for the 
susceptibilities of the inhabitants. 

At the time of the passage of the Stamp 
Act many of these measures had hardly 
taken effect in America, and could have had 
but little influence in rousing the popular 
discontent. Yet others, particularly those 
concerning illegal trade and the encroach- 
ments of the assemblies, must have aroused 
the fear of the colonists that an attempt was 
to be made in a manner more aggressive and 
systematic than ever before to restore to the 
crown the powers that it legally possessed 
and which had now become the liberties of 



248 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

America. The retention of these liberties 
was vital to the life and prosperity of the 
colonies, and they viewed the entrance of 
parliament into the struggle with an appre- 
hension born of uncertainty as to what it 
might do and how eflSciently it might act. 
The two great acts of parliament became, 
therefore, the object of colonial resistance and 
the chief cause of popular protest and revolt. 
The colonial assemblies had already issued 
addresses and memorials against the Sugar 
Act as an evil device, harmful to the colonies 
and threatening their prosperity. Regarding 
the proposed Stamp Act, information of 
which had been sent by Grenville to America 
before the introduction of the bill, they took 
higher ground and in the debates of the year 
1764 began a searching inquiry into the whole 
question of the constitutional rights of par- 
liament, some of the assemblies already 
taking the position that parliament could 
not tax them at all or even legislate for 
them in any capacity. But the restlessness 
of 1764 was transformed into action in 1765, 
when the news came to America that the 
measure had been passed and that their 
protests and petitions had been dismissed 
without a hearing. For the moment the 
leaders hesitated, for it seemed a dangerous 



THE STAMP ACT CONGRESS 249 

thing to defy the parliament of Great Britain, 
but as one section after another became 
ahve to the seriousness of the situation, the 
excitement spread and the spirit of resis- 
tance was aroused. Virginia, in formal reso- 
lutions, carried through with difficulty and 
after long debate by the fiery eloquence of 
Patrick Henry, led the way, and Massachu- 
setts followed, on June 8, by adopting a 
motion to despatch a circular letter to all the 
colonies, inviting them to send delegates to 
a congress to be held at New York the 
following October. 

But such temperate method of discussion 
and protest did not satisfy the more excitable 
and uncontrolled elements in America. In- 
flamed by pamphleteers and popular orators 
and stirred by a sense of wrong and injustice, 
they organized for the purpose of defeating 
the parliamentary measures. To nullify the 
act of 1764 non-importation agreements 
were made and steps taken for the encour- 
agement of domestic manufactures. To 
bring to naught the act of 1765, mobs gath- 
ered in the various cities and compelled 
those who had accepted posts as stamp dis- 
tributors to resign their positions. Spurred 
by success, notably in Boston, they committed 
deeds of violence, the inevitable accompani- 



250 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

ments of a revolution, and destroyed the 
house of Thomas Hutchinson in Boston and 
of the loyaHst Moffatt in Newport. In the 
south, where less violence was committed, the 
same excitement reigned and demonstra- 
tions were made against both collectors and 
stamps. Everywhere a determination was 
manifest to prevent the execution of the 
act, either by destroying the stamps them- 
selves, which was done in many cases, or 
by suspending the issue of newspapers, 
closing the courts, and discontinuing such 
forms of business and trade as required the 
use of stamped paper. In the end the Stamp 
Act proved an entire failure, and the govern- 
ment must have lost considerably by the 
unfortunate venture. 

More important for the future of America 
than this display of popular resistance was 
the gathering, on October 7, 1765, of twenty 
seven delegates at New York, from all the 
colonies except New Hampshire, Virginia, 
North Carolina, and Georgia, in a conference, 
which is sometimes called the first American 
Congress. This body, composed in a ma- 
jority of cases of men chosen by their respec- 
tive assemblies, stands as the first independ- 
ent meeting of the colonists themselves for 
the purpose of mutual cooperation and 



THE STAMP ACT CONGRESS 251 

support. In the face of the threatened 
extension of British imperial authority the 
colonists put aside for the moment their 
differences and in the person of some of their 
ablest leaders met in mutual confidence on 
common ground to voice a common griev- 
ance. In the declaration of rights and 
grievances and the papers drawn up for 
presentation to the king, the House of 
Lords, and the House of Commons, we find 
the first expression of American sentiment 
by a body practically representative of all 
the colonies. United action, which had 
seemed such a remote contingency only a 
few years before, had been rendered neces- 
sary in the presence of what appeared to 
be a common danger, and it resulted in the 
declaration of what also appeared to be a 
fundamental principle and the only one upon 
which all might agree. The phrase "natural 
rights of Englishmen" is vague and mean- 
ingless in the history of constitutional devel- 
opment and political philosophy, and de- 
serves to stand with that other equally abused 
phrase, much on the lips of the colonists at 
this time, "taxation without representation." 
Neither had any literal meaning in fact, but 
as historical influences each became a 
phenomenon of far-reaching significance. 



252 THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

Men have died for a false creed; the colonists 
fought under the banner of a false philosophy. 
The importance of the Stamp Act congress 
does not lie in the declaration of principles 
which it enunciated. It lies in the accom- 
plished fact that amid a thousand centri- 
fugal tendencies that were keeping the 
colonies apart as the inhabitants of thirteen 
separate communities, there had arisen a 
conscious purpose of uniting to support a 
common interest. Premature as it was and 
almost a mockery in the light of the history 
of the years that followed, the remark at 
the congress of Christopher Gadsden, a 
man whose impulses generally outran his 
judgment, was in a sense a prophecy. "There 
ought to be no New England man, no New 
Yorker, known on this continent, but all of 
us Americans." The congress marks the 
end of an era, and inaugurates a period of 
disturbance, disorder, suffering and war, 
destined to culminate in armed revolt from 
British authority, and the eventual over- 
throw of the power of king and parliament 
in America. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

All things considered, the best account of the colonies 
prior to 1765 will be found in Edward Channing's History of 
the United States (vols. I-III, 1905-1912), which treats of 
many of the subjects touched upon in this volume. Supple- 
mental to it are three volumes of The American Nation series 
(IV, "England in America," by Tyler, V, "Colonial Self Gov- 
ernment," by Andrews, and VI, "Provincial America," by 
Greene, 1903-1905), which cover the period from 1607 to 
1750. Some of the chapters in Edward Eggleston's History 
of Life in the United States (vols. I, II, all published, 1896, 
1901) are delightfully written and well worth reading. An 
authoritative account of the plans of union is in Richard 
Frothingham's Rise of the Republic (6th ed., 1895), the best 
book on the subject. 

There are few histories of the individual colonies that are 
likely to interest the general reader. Such as there are may be 
found noticed in the bibliographies appended to the volumes 
of The American Nation series cited above, and in A Bibliog- 
raphy of History (1910), pp. 129-141, where comments and 
criticisms are given. A few works have appeared since these 
bibliographies were made to which attention may be called: 
A. B. Faust, The German Element in the United States (2 vols. 
1909); C. K. Bolton, Scotch Irish Pioneers (1910); L. Mathews, 
The Expansion of New England (1909); R. H. Jones, The 
Quakers in the American Colonies (2 vols., 1911); and A. 
Johnson, The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware (2 vols., 1911). 

Biographies of but few representative colonial leaders have 
been written. Brief lives of Francis Higginson, Thomas 
Hooker, John Winthrop, and Cotton Mather of New England, 
Peter Stuyvesant of New Amsterdam, Sir William Johnson of 
New York, George and Cecilius Calvert of Maryland, and 
James Oglethorpe of Georgia, appear in the Makers of America 
series. A life of William Penn is in the " True " Biographies 
series. Lives have also been written of Conrad Weiser of 
Pennsylvania.^by Walton (1901), of Cadwallader Colden of New 
York, by Keyes (1906), of Roger Williams, by Strauss (1894), 
and of Joseph Dudley of Massachusetts, by Kimball (1911). 
Prof. J. K. Hosmer has written Hves of Sir Harry Vane, the 
younger, and Gov. Hutchinson of Massachusetts, and a bio- 
graphy of Gov. Sharpe has recently appeared from the pen 
of Lady Edgar, 

For religious history reference may be made to The American 
Church History series (1893-1897), nearly every volume of 
which contains information regarding its respective denomina- 
tion in colonial times. The standard work on the Anglican 
church in the colonies is Anderson's History of the Church of 

253 



254 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

England in the Colonies (3 vols. 1856), but it is sadly in want 
of revision. On educational conditions see E. G. Dexter's 
History of Education in the United States (lOOi), and the 
Cyclopedia of Education (3 vols, published, 1912). Chapters 
on social and economic history may be found in the volumes 
of The American Nation series cited above, while William 
Weeden's Economic and Social History of New England (2 
vols. 1891) and Philip A. Bruce's Economic History of Vir- 
ginia, to 1700; Social History of Virginia, and Institutional 
History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century (5 vols. 1900- 
1910) are valuable contributions to the subject. On manners 
and customs the various works of Alice Morse Earle (Lamed, 
Literature of American History, §§ 841, 1044, and A Bibli- 
ography of History, p. 104) are indispensable, though chiefly 
limited to New England and New York, and S. G. Fisher's 
Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial Times (2 vols. 1898) 
is on the whole very good. 

There is no single work that treats comprehensively the 
commercial side of colonial history, but reference may be made 
to Weeden (as above), Bruce (as above), Edward McCrady, 
History of South Carolina (4 vols. 1897-1902), and Bryan Ed- 
wards, History of the British Colonies in the West Indies (5th 
ed., 5 vols. 1819). 

On British policy very little has been written. The only 
works with any pretense to scholarship are H. E. Egerton's 
British Colonial Policy (2d ed. 1909), G. L. Beer's Origins of 
British Colonial Policy, 1578-1660 (1908) and British Colonial 
Policy, 175Jf-1765 (1907). On British administration in 
England and America two works of exceptional excellence 
have recently appeared, O. M. Dickerson's ^American Colonial 
Government, 1696-1765, (1912), which is a history of the Board 
of Trade and its work, and W. T. Root's The Relations of Penn- 
sylvania uith the British Government, 1696-1765 (1912). A 
few special articles may be noted. M. P. Clarke, "The Board 
of Trade at Work," American Historical Review, October, 1912, 
B. W. Bond, Jr., "Quit Rent System in the American Colonies," 
Ibid., April, 1912, and various essays on colonial law and pro- 
cedure in the Select Essays on Anglo-American Legal History, 
(vols. I, II, 1907-1908). While there are many single papers 
on the land system in the colonies no comprehensive work on 
the subject has yet been written. 

Attention may be called to three very useful collections of 
original documents. A. B. Hart's American History told by 
Contemporaries (4 vols. 1901), William MacDonald's Select 
Charters illustrative of American History (1899), and J. F. 
Jameson's Original Narratives of Early American History 
(13 vols. 1900-1912). 



INDEX 



Admiralty, 132-3 

Agriculture, 90, 91 

Albany, 223, 225-7 

Allegiance, 160, 199-204 

American sentiment, 162-3, 251-2 

Aristocracy, 81-3 

Assembly, 158, 173-5, 246, 248 

Authority, 141-54, 182 

Bahamas, 51-5 

Baltimore, Lord, 30, 40-1, 75-9 
Barbadoes, 17, 34-5, 41, 46, 171 
Bermuda, 17, 22. 28, 29, 35, 41, 171 
Board of Trade, 135-8, 141, 147, 

171, 172, 176, 179, 221 
Boston, 26, 218, 219, 249-50 
Boundaries, 207-9 

Calvert. See Baltimore, Lord 
Canada, 15, 32, 238, 239 
Carlisle, Earl of, 34-6 
Carolinas, 16, 51-5, 182, 183, 232 
Carteret, Sir George, 46-8 
Charleston, 52, 96, 101 
Church, 83, 87-9, 219, 246 
Civil list, 171-2 
Clergy, 83, 87-9 
Coasting trade, 93-4, 212 
Colonists, character, 59-61 
Commerce. See Trade 
Common law, 182-5 
Communication, 152-3, 205-12 
Companies, incorporated, 20-30 
Complaints and grievances, 178-81 
Congresses, 219-220, 223-7, 24&-52 
Connecticut, 15, 27-9, 38, 41 
Constitution, 244 
Control of the Colonies, 141-54 
Cooper. See Shaftesbury 
Courts, 178-81 
Customs duties, 189-96, 207, 242 

V 

Defense, 146, 159, 219, 223-7, 245 

Delaware, 16 

Democracy, 60, 63-8, 81-3, 100 

Departments, 121, 128-35 

Disallowance, 176-8 

Dutch. 15. 16, 17, 114, 125 



Education, 89, 104 

England's Constitutional changes, 

121, 128-30 
England's policy, 107-27, 138-40 

Feudalism, 76, 79, 105, 164-6 
Finance, 131-2, 150-2, 159, 170, 201, 

239 
Fisheries, 94 
Florida, 16, 44 
Franchise, 158 
Franklin, B., 215 
French, 9-16, 18, 32, 35, 198-9, 224, 

230, 237 
French and Indian War, 230-6 

Georgia, 16, 170, 232 
Gorges, Sir F., 30, 36-40 
Governors, 167-74, 181 
Grenville, 242, 244-5, 248 . 
Growth, 161-3, 192 

Henry, Patrick, 236, 249 
Hudson's Bay Company, 13 
Huguenots, 32-3 

Immigration, 98-9 

Independence, 155, 161, 164, 181, 

203-4, 238, 243 
Indians, 197, 221, 223, 225, 226, 240 
Individualism, 229, 233 
Insurrections, 157, 161 
Irish, 100-2 

Jamaica, 17, 44, 171, 241 
Jamestown, 21, 22, 70, 74 

Land-holding, 64-5, 71-3, 165-7 

Laws, 144, 175-85 
Legal delays, 180-81 
Lennox, Earl of, 30-1 
Liberties, 247-8 
Locke, John, 51, 52 
London Company, 21-3 
Long Island, 32 
Loyalty, 202, 233 
Lumber. 198-7 



255 



256 



INDEX 



Mdls, 212-14 
Maine, 15, 32 
Maltravers, Lord, 30-3 
Manufactures, 96-7, 119, 120, 123 
Maryland. 16, 35, 41, 55-6, 75-9, 

231 
Massachusetts, 15, 25-9, 36-40, 41, 

65-7, 81-3, 86, 118, 125, 100, 216, 

230, 249 
"Mayflower," ship, 24 
Migration, 209-10 
Military affairs, 230-5, 247 
Molasses, 189, 194, 236, 242, 247 

Naval stores, 195-6 

Navigation Acts, 115-19, 188 

New England, 15, 24-9, 31, 36-40; 
lands and towns, 63-8; lumber 
trade, 196-7; union, 216; Do- 
minion, 217-19 

Newfoundland, 14, 40 

New Hampshire, 15, 27 

New Jersey, 16, 47-51 

Newport, 93, 94, 96 

News, 213 

.New York, 15, 45, 50-51, 173, 183, 
230 

North and South, 105-6, 208-9 

Nova Scotia. 15, 32 

Officials, 145, 149-150 
Otis, James, 236 

Parliament, 129, 148-9, 163, 172, 

186, 241, 248 
Paymaster, 132 
Penn, 56-9, 77, 80 
Pennsylvania, 10, 20, 55-9, 75-80, 

183, 230-1 
Philadelphia, 57, 58, 80 
Pilgrims, 24-5, 37 
Pirates, 18-19, 64 
Plantations and Colonies, 108-12 
Planters, 95, 99, 101 
Plymouth, 15, 21, 22, 24-5, 37, 41, 

82 
Policy of England, 107-27, 138-40 
Popular rule, 157-9, 168 
Privateers, 18-19 
Pri\ v Council, 122-5,'128-30 
Proprietors, 30-41, 47, 55 
Purilans, 26-8, 36-40, 84-8 



Quakers, 43, 48-50, 56 
Quit-rents, 165-7 

Religious beginnings, 12, 23-8, 43, 

84, 87-9 
Representation, 73-5 
Resistance, 200, 203, 248, 249, 260 
Revenue, 242-3, 245 j 

Rhode Island, 15, 27, 28, 29, 41 
Rice, 187 

Roman Catholics, 40-1 
Royal provinces, 120-7, 142-4, 234- 

5 

St. Christopher, 34 

Salem, 26 

Saybrook, 15, 38, 64 

Scots-Irish, 100-2 

Self-government, 235, 243 

Separation, 155, 101, 185 

Shaftesbury, Earl of, 47, 61-8 

Simplicity, 81-3 

Smith, John, 22 

Smuggling, 191-4 

Social conditions, 97-106, 166 

Southern Society, 103-4 

Spanish, 16, 17, 18, 38, 237 

Stamp tax, 244-52 

Statute laws, 182, 184 

Stirling, Earl of, 30-2 

Sugar, 193-4, 198, 242, 247, 248 

Taxation, 242-52 

Tobacco, 23, 71, 86, 90, 01, 96, 99, 

113-5, 187 
Tolerance, 27- 8 
Town, 63-5, 78-80 
Trade, 43-7/ 92-4, 109-19, 186-9; 

illegal, 191-4, 198-200, 247 
Trading companies, 20-3 
Travel, 209-13 

Union, 205, 209, 214-28, 229, 251-2 

Virginia, 16, 21-3, 28-33, 41, 68- 
75, 231-2, 249 

War office, 133-5 

Warwick, Earl of, 37-8 

WesL Indies, 17-19, 34-6, 192-6, 198, 

288 
Williams, Roger, 28, 85 
Writs of Assistance, 236 



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